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THE PHILOSOPHY 



OF 



HERBERT SPENCER. 



Ueiruj arc (Brnmbxatian of % Jfirst ^rinxiples of Iris Jlgsiem, 



By B. P. BOWNE, A. B. 




&? 



NEW YORK: ^ 

NELSON cfc PHILLIPS 
CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 

1874. • 



^ 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 






TO 

PROF. BENJAMIN N. MARTIN — 

ONE OF THOSE RARE SOULB 

WHO KNOW HOW TO COMBINE FAITH AND FREEDOM J 

WHO, UNDETERRED BY PROSCRIPTION, SEEK TO PROVE ALL THINGS, 

WHILE, UNFASCINATED BY NOVELTY, 

THEY LOYALLY HOLD FAST ALL THAT IS GOOD — 

| j&tbirate lljis Ifloofc. 

B. P. BOWNE. 



PREFACE 



' I "HE following discussion is based upon 
several essays which lately appeared in 
the " New Englander." They have been ex- 
tended somewhat, and, for the sake of greater 
unity than essays which were at first inde- 
pendent of each other could have, their form 
has also been altered. I have quoted copi- 
ously from Mr. Spencer for two reasons : 
First, no candid writer, whose purpose is as 
controversial as mine, will trust himself to 
represent his opponent's doctrine without 
the check, both of exact quotation and exact 
reference ; and, secondly, because so contra- 
dictory and absurd are some of Mr. Spencer's 
positions, that my unsupported statements 
about them would not be believed. 

Mr. Spencer claims to seek for truth. I 



6 Preface. 

make the same claim ; and, believing most 
heartily that Mr. Spencer has not found the 
truth, I have ventured to say so. Still the 
appeal is not to sentiment, much less to au- 
thority, but to the judicial reason. Let reason 
judge between us. 

Halle, November ; 1873. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter Page 

I. What is Evolution ? 9 

II. Laws of the Unknowable 24 

III. Laws of the Knowaele 79 

IV. Principles of Psychology 146 

V. The Theistic Argument 218 

VI. Summary and Conclusion 270 



REVIEW OF HERBERT SPENCER. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 

NO one longer holds with the ancient skeptic, 
that all things remain as they were since the 
beginning. All alike admit that the universe, as 
we know it, has had a beginning in time, and the 
problem which all alike propose is, to account for its 
origin and history. There was a time in the eternal 
duration when the present order did not exist, and a 
time when it began to be. How ? This is the question 
which both science and religion attempt to answer. 

Until within a few years Theism has been accus- 
tomed to conceive of creation as an instantaneous 
work. " The Creator spake, and it was done ; he 
commanded, and it stood fast." In a moment, as 
the lightning flashes out of the dark night, so the 
worlds were "won from the void and formless in- 
finite," and each one started on its way, perfect after 
its kind. By the word of the Lord were the heavens 
made. At his command the light kindled, and the 
oceans filled, and the whole earth swarmed with 
life. But it is claimed that the long times of 



io Review of Herbert Spencer. 

natural history and geology, and the gradual intro- 
duction of higher forms, have thrown doubt upon 
this conception. It is said that the law which holds 
for all present development is true for creation also : 
First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn 
in the ear. Creation was not a single but a succes- 
sive work ; and, instead of being finished once for all, 
its vast and mysterious operations are still going on. 
Even yet the creative plan is not completed ; and, so 
far from being at a distance, we are in the very 
midst of creation's week. 

It is hardly necessary to point out that evolution 
in this general form is perfectly compatible with 
Theism. All that Theism cares to know is, that 
Mind is the primal cause and the eternal ruler of the 
universe. Whether it hastens on to its purpose, or 
whether it lingers upon its way, is a matter of com- 
parative indifference. When was it that the Spirit 
of God brooded over nature to bring forth the living 
from the lifeless ? Set up the date six thousand 
years ago, or carry it back to that nebulous time 
when the earth was without form and void, and dark- 
ness hung over the face of the deep ; one cannot see 
that it makes any difference. When was it that the 
seeds of life and mind were sown ? Was it after our 
earth had taken on its final form ? or were they scat- 
tered upon that desert mist from which the world 
has sprung ? How long was nature in fulfilling the 
Divine command — a week or an age ? Has it ac- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. II 

complished the work, or is it yet toiling at the task ? 
Were the lower forms of life created with the power 
of evolving the higher or not ? Is organic existence 
complex in essence, or is its variety but a harmonious 
variation upon a single string ? It is no degradation 
to the individual to be born ; why should it be any 
more degrading to species to be born ? If it is not 
degrading to teach that the individual reaches dis- 
tinctive manhood only through the darkness and 
weakness of the birth-process and of unfolding in- 
fancy, I know not why it should be thought degrading 
to teach that species, too, struggle up through lower 
forms to their distinctive characteristics. I cannot 
feel that Theism, or even Christianity, is at all con- 
cerned with the answer to any of these questions. 
One view makes creation single, the other makes it 
successive. One concentrates the creative act upon 
a point of time, the other spreads it over unknown 
years. One makes nature instantaneously obedient ; 
the other keeps it toiling for ages at the Divine com- 
mand. Either view might be worthily held, and 
each has many elements of peculiar sublimity and 
grandeur. Religion cares only to insist that in the 
beginning a Divine sower went forth to sow. 

But there is another form of the evolution theory. 
The thorough-going evolutionist, availing himself of 
the doctrine of the unity of the forces, paces with 
firm step through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
and finally brings all things home to the parentage 



12 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

of matter and force. He drives back beyond all 
life, beyond all form, beyond even the present 
material elements, back to the raw and faint 
beginnings of matter and force themselves. At that 
distant point there are no such myths as life and 
mind ; these are unimaginable ages down the future. 
There is nothing there but little lumps of good, hard 
matter. These are the fountain-head of existence, 
and only need to be left alone long enough to trans- 
form chaos into creation. Mind is not the begin- 
ning and primal cause of things, but is the final 
outcome of nature — the highest point to which the 
whirling atoms climb. This is what purports to be 
the scientific book of Genesis. This is evolution as 
it is held by the New School of Philosophy, of which 
Mr. Spencer is one of the chief apostles. 

Now let us note the true, nature of the problem 
which the New Philosophy attempts to solve. It 
often happens that a few vague and general anal- 
ogies are allowed to blind the reason to the infinite 
complexity of the problem, and it may even be 
questioned whether many of the evolutionists them- 
selves properly appreciate the task they have to 
perform. Their proposition, in plain words, is this : 
All things have come, by a rigid mechanical se- 
quence, from the condensation of that primeval mist. 
Not merely the forms and disposition of matter, but 
life, and mind, and their various manifestations, have 
all been evolved by necessary physical causation. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 13 

At first sight it would appear that thought and 
emotion have nothing in common with the buzzing 
of atoms ; but, in truth, these little lumps need only 
to be properly combined to become self-conscious, 
and think, and feel, and hope, and aspire ; and, if 
they have come forward under the proper conditions, 
they may even pray and worship. Whatever of 
nobility, of heroism, and of high manhood there 
may have been in the past, it was only a material 
combination, and had an exact physical equivalent. 
So completely is mind the result of organization, 
that it is even held that if a brain could be made 
exactly like that of Socrates, the owner would have 
the memory, the thought, the consciousness of 
Socrates. Two brains which are physically equiv- 
alent are also mentally equivalent. Construct, to- 
day, the brain of Plato as it was in his old age, and 
that brain would remember its early association with 
Socrates, the scenes at his trial and in the prison, 
the composition of the dialogues, and all that the 
real Plato actually experienced. Manufacture Crom- 
well's brain, and it could give you an exact account, 
from its own consciousness, of the battle at Naseby 
and the triumph at Marston Moor. It could tell of 
the Long Parliament, the condemnation of the King, 
and the Lord-Protectorship. Any man's thought, 
memory, consciousness, could be completely recov- 
ered by reconstructing his brain. If there had 
been a spectator who could detect the position of 



14 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the forces in that nebulous mass, he could have rea- 
soned mechanically and mathematically, to orbital 
rings and solid globes, to man and his works, to 
Homer and the Iliad, to Newton and the Principia, 
to Milton and the Paradise Lost, to Shakspeare 
and Hamlet. By simple deductive reasoning, that 
spectator could have foreseen all our art, our science, 
our civilization, and could have prophesied all that 
is yet to come. He could have foretold all the folly 
and suffering and sin of men, and could have writ- 
ten human history, while yet the race was unborn. 
There is not a mote that trembles in the sunbeam, 
nor a leaf that is driven in the wind, whose exist- 
ence and exact position he could not have foretold. 
The problem would, indeed, have been a complex 
one, and would have outrun the resources of our 
mathematics, but still it would have been a purely 
mechanical question. There is not a thought that 
ever toiled, or that ever shall toil, in a human brain, 
there is not an ache that ever wrung a human heart, 
that was not potentially there. The physical com- 
binations that represent truth and honor, piety and 
affection, were all latent there. Our longings for 
knowledge were there ; and when we inquire after 
the origin of things our thoughts but return to 
their early home. Mr. Spencer, and his philosophy, 
and the criticisms upon it, were there. The 
dancing atoms whirled and whirled, until they be- 
came self-conscious, and thought, and reflected, and 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 1 5 

wrote their autobiography in the philosophy of Mr. 
Spencer. I am not misrepresenting the theory. 
Prof. Tyndall says of it : " Strip it naked, and you 
stand face to face with the notion that not only the 
more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not 
alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not 
alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the 
human body, but that the human mind itself — emo- 
tion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena — were 
once latent in a fiery cloud." * In this evolution there 
has been no guiding Mind, but only the working of 
physical force. Mr. Spencer demands no purpose, 
but only a power. One aim of his philosophy is to 
show that an intelligent Creator is needless. He is 
impatient of the doctrine that creation is. the work 
of wisdom, and calls it the " carpenter theory." If 
we consider the fact and function of reproduction, 
which run through all organic nature, it would 
seem that here is overwhelming proof of a purpose 
to preserve the species ; but we are not allowed to 
think so, on pain of being charged with " fetichism." 
If we think of the eye or ear as it forms in the 
womb, it would seem that the power at work must 
understand the laws of acoustics and optics, to form 
these organs in such exact and complex accordance 
with them. It would seem, too, that the formation 
of these organs before they are needed indicates a 
knowledge of future wants, and a purpose of supply- 
* "Fragments of Science," p. 159. 



1 6 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ing them ; but this belief also lies under the ban of 
fetichism. We can hardly help believing that the 
several organs were intended to perform those func- 
tions which they actually do perform ; but this 
thought is only a species of the primitive fetichism. 
The eyes are used to see with, but they were not 
intended for seeing. The ears hear, but they were 
not designed for hearing. We see and hear because 
we have eyes and ears ; but we are forbidden to say 
tha.t eyes and ears exist in order that we may see. 
The organs of reproduction serve to preserve the 
species, but they were not made for any such end. 
They were evolved and used for this purpose. 
Every thing, no matter how complex and purpose- 
like in its adaptations, represents the working of a 
power ; nothing whatever exhibits the fulfillment of 
a purpose. "The transformation of an indefinite, 
incoherent homogeneity into a definite, coherent 
heterogeneity, which goes on every-where until it 
brings about a reverse transformation, is consequent 
upon certain simple laws of force."* Such is the 
theory. To many it will seem to break down from 
pure excess of absurdity. At present I make no 
decision ; but I do insist that every one who is fond 
of talking magniloquently about evolution should 
know precisely what he has to prove. 

Yet, strange as it may seem, Mr. Spencer denies 
that his system is atheistic. The ground of the 

* " First Principles," p. 495. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 1 7 

denial is his doctrine of an unknowable. But, 
upon inquiry, it turns out that this unknowable is 
merely the substance which underlies phenomena. 
It has neither sense, intelligence, nor will. To 
attribute these to it is a species of fetichism. Yet 
Mr. Spencer dreams that he saves his system from 
atheism by calling this thing God. We will not 
quarrel about names. That which we know as mat- 
ter is set up as the cause of all things. This matter, 
working according to mechanical laws, without intel- 
ligence or purpose, has produced the order of the 
world about us. All spontaneous action is distinctly 
repudiated. This is the doctrine ; and this is essen- 
tial atheism. 

Mr. Spencer further denies that his system is 
materialistic. The New Philosophy plumes itself 
upon rising above the contest between the spiritual- 
ist and materialist, and pronounces the question to 
be a war of words. The claim is the emptiest pre- 
tense. " That no idea or feeling arises save as a result 
of some physical force expended in producing it, is 
fast becoming a commonplace of science ; and who- 
ever duly weighs the evidence will see that nothing 
but an overwhelming bias in favor of a preconceived 
theory can explain its non-acceptance." * That 
mental force is but transformed physical force, is the 
primary assumption. The mind itself is a "series 
of states of consciousness ;" and a state of conscious- 

* " First Principles," p. 280. 
2 



1 8 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ness is a transformed nerve-current. Now note the 
result. Without a nervous system there can be 
no nerve-currents ; without nerve-currents there 
can be no states of consciousness ; and without 
states of consciousness there can be no mind. The 
mind comes into existence with the organism, and 
both perish together. During its existence, it is ab- 
solutely determined by external conditions ; for Mr. 
Spencer denies volitional freedom in the most explicit 
terms, and on the admitted ground that if freedom 
be a fact it is fatal to his system. Now, it is rather 
instructive, after such teaching, to be told that " the 
explanations here given are no more materialistic 
than they are spiritualistic." It is evident, however, 
from the frequency and earnestness with which 
Mr. Spencer makes this claim, that he really thinks 
his petty word-distinctions save his system from 
materialism. Yet, if the system which makes the 
soul a product of organization that must, of course, 
perish with the organism is not materialistic, it 
would be hard to say what materialism is. Indeed, 
this is the doctrine which most of the leaders of the 
New Philosophy now openly avow, whether from 
keener logical perception or from greater causes I 
cannot decide. 

One more general criticism must be offered before 
proceeding to a specific examination of this philos- 
ophy. Every system of evolution which is not 
guided by intelligence is merely a new edition 



Review of He?'bert Spencer. 19 

of the time-honored theory of chance. In every 
mechanical system, all the results depend upon the 
first impulse, and between that primal motion and 
its effects there is room for nothing but necessity. 
However wide-spreading its effects may be, they 
were all necessarily contained in that first motion. 
Now, since to-day is determined by yesterday, it 
follows that all days were determined by the first 
day ; and before this philosophy can assume to be 
an explanation at all, it must account for that first 
day. The implicit assumption of its disciples is, 
that by the time we have reached the nebula, we 
have come to a simple and unorganized form of mat- 
ter which needs no explanation. But here it must 
be borne in mind that complexity and organization 
do not cease where we fail to trace them. Upon 
this point Prof. Tyndall speaks as follows : 

" It cannot be too distinctly borne in mind that 
between the microscopic limit and the molecular 
limit there is room for infinite permutations and 
combinations. It is in this region that the poles of 
the atoms are arranged, that tendency is given to 
their powers, so that when these poles and powers 
have free action and proper stimulus in a suitable 
environment, they determine first the germ and after- 
ward the complete organism. The first marshaling 
of the atoms, upon which all subsequent action de- 
pends, baffles a keener power than that of the micro- 
scope. Through pure excess of complexity, and long 



20 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

before observation can have any voice in the matter 
the most highly-trained intellect, the most refined 
and disciplined imagination, retires in bewilderment 
from the contemplation of the problem. We are 
struck dumb by an astonishment which no micro- 
scope can relieve, doubting not only the power of our 
instrument, but even whether we ourselves possess 
the intellectual elements which will enable us to grap- 
ple with the ultimate structural energies of nature." * 
Prof. Tyndall here calls attention to a fact which 
biologists and physiologists constantly overlook — the 
almost infinite complexity of what the microscope sees 
as simple. Nothing is more common than to hear 
physiologists, Mr. Spencer among the rest, speak of 
germs as perfectly homogeneous, because the micro- 
scope detects no trace of organization ; and, indeed, 
atheistic reasoning derives much of its plausibility 
from this false assumption. If the complex animal 
can be derived from the homogeneous germ, it is 
not incredible that the complexity of creation should 
be derived from the homogeneous nebula. But 
Prof. Tyndall has taught us that homogeneity is 
only in seeming ; that under the most homogeneous 
surface there are structural energies of such com- 
plexity, that we must question whether we have the 
mental elements which will enable us to grapple 
with them. It was in that realm, inaccessible to 
every thing but mind, that the wonders of creation 

* " Fragments of Science," p. 153. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 21 

were wrought out. The atheist's attempt to escape 
into simplicity is fruitless. His very assumptions 
forbid it. Because of the necessity which connects 
cause and effect in every mechanical scheme, we 
must conclude that all which exists now, existed 
in its causes at any given time in the past. The 
nebulous period really manifested no less intelli- 
gence and purpose than the present does ; the only 
difference is, that what is explicit now was implicit 
then. Going back to that nebulous time, we find 
tendencies and laws and powers so balanced that 
time alone is needed to give birth to the present 
order. No matter how far back we go ; if we assume 
that that nebula was the ruins of an earlier system, 
which had in turn been born from an antecedent 
nebula, still, at the earliest time, we find the exact 
and complex adjustment of tendencies and powers 
which must in time give birth to to-day. Looking 
around upon that earliest nebula, we find that the 
present was there ; and again we ask, What deter- 
mined that first day ? what procured that primal 
balance of poles and powers, which made it impos- 
sible that any thing but the existing order should be 
born ? Here lies the mystery of creation ; nothing 
is explained until this question is answered. It 
must be either the work of wisdom or of chance ; 
and if the work of chance, then all that has sprung 
from it is the work of chance also. Mr. Spencer 
denies that intelligence has any thing to do with 



22 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

evolution ; it follows, then, that chance is the archi- 
tect of the universe. The vaporings about law and 
order do indeed serve to give an aspect of freshness 
to the threadbare arguments ; but they in no wise 
alter the underlying philosophy. When we get to 
the naked form of Mr. Spencer's teaching, it is that 
a cloud of atoms only need to be shaken together 
long enough to hit upon the present order and har- 
mony of the universe. The New Philosophy is not 
so new after all ; for, except in terminology, this is 
precisely the doctrine which Democritus and Lucre- 
tius taught two thousand years ago. The only thing 
which gives the new heresy greater plausibility than 
the old, is the greater extension of the universe in 
time. Who knows what might happen in eternity ? 
To be sure, we do not find the atoms playing any 
such tricks now ; but who knows what might not 
have happened back yonder in the dark ? Time 
works wonders ; and so the evolutionist becomes 
confused and giddy from the long cycles with which 
he deals, and talks of " untold ages," as if time could 
certainly correlate with intelligence. Because the 
work of intelligence is not stolen outright, but by 
piecemeal, the theft is allowed to escape notice. It 
is the error of the old mythology over again. The 
evolutionist gets the world upon the turtle's back ; 
and then either he forgets to supply any footing for 
the turtle, or else his faith becomes robust enough to 
venture to stand alone. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 23 

We are now able to determine the true nature of 
the Spencerian doctrine of evolution. Whatever 
Mr. Spencer's personal views may be, the doctrine of 
his books is fatalism, materialism, atheism. These 
words are not used as terms of opprobrium at all, but 
as exactly descriptive of the system. There is no 
personal God ; there is no immortal soul. There is 
nothing but necessity without, and necessity within. 
To be sure, this philosophy is fond of speaking of 
progress, and talks, almost like a prophet, of the new 
heaven and the new earth. But, nevertheless, the 
progress ends in annihilation ; and all the wealth of 
manhood and affection which has made history rich 
and reverend, has dropped into darkness and per- 
ished. It is most instructive to hear materialism 
boasting of the high destiny which awaits the race. 

But it is not for the critic to get frightened at 
results, but to ask for the credentials of the doctrine. 
It does not follow that the theory is false because it 
is materialistic and atheistic. We should indeed feel 
saddened and degraded if it were established, but 
that is no argument against it. If the reasoning is 
just, and the assumptions are well-founded, the doc- 
trine must stand, with all its dreadful consequences. 
These are the questions which we have now to 
consider. 



24 Review of Herbert Spencer. 



CHAPTER II. 

LAWS OF THE UNKNOWABLE. 

1\/TR. SPENCER introduced his philosophy 
■J-'-*- about ten years ago by the publication 
of his "First Principles." The volume is divided 
into two parts : the " Laws of the Unknowable," 
and the " Laws of the Knowable." Part I aims 
to determine the true sphere of all rational inves- 
tigation, and, by so doing, to save the speculative 
mind from wasting its strength upon barren and 
essentially insoluble problems. The conclusion 
reached is that we can know nothing but phe- 
nomena, and their relations of coexistence and suc- 
cession. Reality lies beyond the reach of our 
faculties, and is essentially unknowable. 

When this work first appeared it was received 
with considerable applause, even by religious think- 
ers. Mr. Spencer admitted the reality of religion, 
and insisted upon the existence of God. To be 
sure, God, as the essential reality of the universe, 
must be unknowable ; but still, as such reality, Mr. 
Spencer insisted upon the Divine existence as the 
most fundamental datum of science, as well as of 
religion. In this respect the work was an agree- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 25 

able change upon the open war, and scarcely un- 
disguised atheism, of such men as Comte. It had, 
too, an aspect of humility. It set a limit to many 
extravagant speculations by declaring the limited 
nature of our faculties. These things moved many 
theologians to look upon the work as a flag of truce 
sent out from a hitherto hostile camp ; and they 
failed to see that the concessions to religion 
amounted to absolutely nothing, while the de- 
mands from it were such as to render true piety 
impossible. Mr. Spencer's "reconciliation" was ef- 
fected by the destruction of one of the parties, and 
his peace was that of death. A God who must 
always remain x for thought and conscience has no 
more religious value than a centaur or a sea-serpent. 
Not that Mr. Spencer intended this result when 
he introduced this Trojan horse ; but such is, never- 
theless, the outcome of the doctrine. In its relig- 
ious aspects this theory of nescience is as per- 
nicious as any in all speculation ; more so, even, than 
the hardy, old-fashioned atheism, because it is 
more decorous in appearance, and more specious 
in argument, while the two are identical in the final 
result. The first is a precipice, bold and naked, 
over which one may plunge if he chooses, but not 
unconsciously ; the second is the same precipice 
covered over with snow, not strong enough to save 
one from the abysses, but powerful by its seeming 
safety to lure one to destruction. 



26 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

In passing to an examination of Mr. Spencer's 
reasoning I must bespeak the readers' patience. 
The discussion will lead us into many metaphys- 
ical recesses ; and the country through which we 
take our way is surely as dry as Sahara, if, indeed, 
it be not full as barren. 

This know-nothing doctrine is as old as philoso- 
phy, but the philosophy of the doctrine has changed 
with time. Formerly the difficulty was external, 
now it is internal. "We cannot know any thing," 
the old skeptics used to say, "because as much, 
and as good, evidence can be brought against any 
proposition or belief as for it ; and hence the mind 
must remain in eternal balance between two opin- 
ions." Rut the fault was in the evidence, not in 
the mind. If there were any reality to know, the 
mind was clearly competent to apprehend it ; but 
is there any reality to know ? This was the ques- 
tion with them ; and they held that in every case 
the contradictions of the testimony so embarrassed 
the jury as to render necessary the Scotch verdict 
— not proven. 

Now, all this has changed. The difficulty is no 
longer external, but internal. The criticism of fact 
has been exchanged for the criticism of faculty. 
The nescientist no longer inquires whether reality 
exists, but contents himself with the humbler ques- 
tion, whether we have any faculties for knowing 
it, supposing it to exist? As the result of his 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 27 

inventory, mental limits have been discovered, and 
all knowledge of the real is said to be beyond 
them. The grounds of nescience are much more 
fundamental than the old know-nothings dreamed. 
By the constitution of the mind itself we are for- 
ever prohibited from reaching reality. Phenomena 
are all we know ; and these, when analyzed to the 
bottom, can never give us things as they are, or 
"things in themselves." Between appearances, or 
things as we know them, and the hidden reality 
behind them, an impassable gulf is fixed. 

This form of nescience began with Kant. He 
taught that there are forms of thought and sensi- 
bility in the mind which determine the form of 
our knowledge, something as a mold gives shape 
to a casting. The matter of any thing, as an iron 
ball, is one thing ; the form is quite another. So the 
content, or matter of our knowledge, is given by the 
thing ; but the form, which is entirely different, is 
given by the mind itself. And as the same matter 
can be molded into a thousand different forms, can 
be round, square, triangular, etc. : so the same exter- 
nal reality can take on different shapes, according as 
it is cast in different mental molds. Hence all our 
knowledge is a composite, of which the two factors 
are, the external thing, and the internal form. What 
the thing is apart from this form, or what it is " in 
itself," is, and must be — to use the established phrase 
— " unknown and unknowable." Moreover, as it is 



28 Review of Herbert Speticer. 

conceivable that other orders of intelligence should 
differ from the human, we can never be sure that our 
knowledge has universal validity. We think things 
in the relation of cause and effect, of substance and 
attribute, etc. ; but these relations are only forms of 
our thought, and correspond to no reality in the 
thing. We cannot help assenting to the so-Called 
intuitions, not because they represent the universal 
truths of the universe, but because they constitute 
the skeleton of the mind itself. They uphold the 
mind and give law to its tendencies ; but so far from 
revealing reality to us, they rather lead us away from 
it. Their very necessity stamps them as mental 
forms, and their utterances become untrustworthy 
in proportion as they are sure. Hence our knowl- 
edge is of phenomena only, and is true only for us ; 
at least, we can never be sure that it is true for other 
orders of being. The windows of the human mind 
are of stained glass, and the inhabitant within is 
forever cut off from the white light of reality beyond. 
These are the essential features of the Kantian 
theory; and the doctrine of relativity, upon which 
Mr. Spencer relies for the support of his view, is but 
a degraded form of the same. This later form of the 
doctrine, as it appears in the works of Hamilton, 
Mansel, and Spencer, has far less logical and meta- 
physical value than the earlier form as taught by Kant 
In Kant's works, one commonly finds both good 
sense, and good logic. The arguments are not mere" 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 29 

ly logical, but real. We may not admit their validity, 
but at the same time we feel that they have a genuine 
momentum, and are not a logical play on words. In- 
deed, if Kant could have saved his system from Ideal- 
ism, it would have been well-nigh impregnable. But' 
in passing to the relativity philosophy, one is sensible 
of a marked change in this respect. There seems to 
be a kind of intellectual shuffling going on ; a play- 
ing fast and loose with words, as the " absolute," 
" infinite," " conditioned," " unconditioned," etc. 
There is an air of jugglery and thimble-rigging 
over the whole. This makes one regard many ot 
the conclusions as he does the celebrated one, that 
each cat has three tails, or that the minute-hand of 
a watch can never overtake the hour-hand ; to dis- 
prove them may be difficult, but .to believe them is 
impossible. We certainly see the ghost according to 
programme ; but we cannot rid ourselves of the con- 
viction that concave mirrors and magic lanterns are 
at the bottom of the show. Kant shows us real ex- 
istences righting, the relativist shows us shadows. 
These indulge in the most dazzling fence, and cleave 
each other through and through ; but no blood is 
drawn, and nobody is hurt. 

Armed with a knowledge of our mental limits, Mr. 
Spencer, following in the wake of Hamilton . and 
Mansel, proceeds to charge all our familiar concep- 
tions with involving contradictions and intellectual 
hari-kari. A further analysis of our faculties reveals 



30 Revieiv of Herbert Spencer. 

to his searching gaze a pack of intellectual impostors 
who, by some hocus-pocus, have contrived to shuffle 
themselves into such universal acceptance, that most 
men regard them as necessary truths. But these 
villains are usurpers nevertheless ; and having the 
bad taste to contradict our philosopher, they very 
naturally excite his wrath. He at once brands them 
as " pseud-ideas," keeps them just long enough to give 
evidence against themselves — which is assumed to be 
the only true evidence they can give — and then turns 
them out of doors. We notice that they are contin- 
ually smuggled in to help the prosecution, but are for- 
bidden to say a word for the defense. This is the last 
feather. After being convicted of harboring " pseud- 
ideas," the mind feels the propriety of being humble 
For the present our only hope is that, as these neces- 
sary truths, alias pseud-ideas, are such liars, they 
may have lied when they spoke against themselves. 
The authority for this summary ejection seems to be 
that these truths cannot be pictured by the imagi- 
nation, and hence are " unthinkable," and " incon- 
ceivable." The test of the knowable is its ability to 
come before the representative faculty. Whatever 
can do this may be admitted to the rank of real- 
ity ; whatever cannot thus appear is banished into 
the outer darkness of illusions and " pseud-ideas." 
Horsed upon this test of knowledge, Mr. Spencer 
gallops gayly out of the a priori country, but, like 
the famous John Gilpin, is carried farther than he 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 3 1 

cares to go, before he dismounts. Can any thing be 
more mocking to an exact thinker, than this claim 
that nothing shall be admitted to the rank of knowl- 
edge, which cannot come before the representative 
faculty ? What is the image of force ? or of cause ? 
of law ? or of existence ? Yet these, and a multitude 
of other ideas, all absolutely without the imagination, 
do constantly enter into the exactest reasonings, each 
keeping its own place without any danger,*nay, with- 
out any possibility, of being confounded with any 
other. Now are we to claim that all knowledge into 
which these " unthinkable ideas " enter is only illu- 
sion ? If v/e do, then science, as well as religion, 
must vanish into the dreams of night. This test of 
Mr. Spencer's reduces all knowledge to the scale of 
sensation, and makes science itself impossible. For 
observation and experiment constitute a very small 
portion of scientific knowledge. The greater part is 
only inference from observed facts, and depends upon 
the validity of our belief in causation. Science 
deals with forces, and causes, and laws, and space, 
and time ; these words are forever upon its lips. But 
what does the imagination know about forces, and 
causes, and laws ? All these ideas are utterly with- 
out the imagination, and are strictly inconceivable, 
in the sense that no mental image can be formed of 
them. It follows, then, that science, which is built 
entirely upon these ideas, is blank illusion, and must 
be content to vanish, along with religion, into the 



32 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

abysses of the unknowable. If involving unthink- 
able ideas warrants the banishment of religion, it 
also warrants the repudiation of science. If Mr. 
Spencer insists upon this test we need go no further. 
Sensation is the measure of knowledge, and his phi- 
losophy falls to the ground. Mr. Spencer has mowed 
down the " pseud-ideas " without mercy ; but in his 
enthusiasm has, unfortunately, mowed off his own 
legs. After we have gone further into Mr. Spencer's 
work, we shall not be surprised at any thing in the 
way of contradiction ; but at present it seems strange 
that he should have adopted such a test without per- 
ceiving that it tells as powerfully against science as 
against religion. Besides, too, it is plainly false ; the 
conceivable, in his sense of the word, does not com- 
prise all the knowable ; indeed, the most certain 
knowledge we have is what Hamilton has most hap- 
pily termed the " unpicturable notions of the intelli- 
gence." Mr. Spencer says large numbers are incon- 
ceivable ; but that does not shake our faith in our 
calculations. Great magnitudes fail of an adequate 
conception, but our knowledge is none the less sure. 
The infinity of space baffles and breaks down the im- 
agination, but is an assured fact of the understanding. 
Self-existence, Mr. Spencer says, is an inconceiv- 
ability of the first magnitude, and all ideas into which 
it enters must be sentenced to perpetual imprison- 
ment in the unknowable ; yet we have no surer 
piece of knowledge than that there is self-existence 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 33 

somewhere. Whenever the intellect is steadied and 
focussed for exact statement, it affirms, with the 
utmost certainty, that all we see finds its support and 
reality in an existence within it, or beyond it, which is 
self-centered and abiding. The truths of the under- 
standing are not the truths of the imagination ; and 
it is the neglect of this fact which lies at the bottom 
of Kant's antinomies, Hamilton's contradictions, and 
the general assortment of inconceivabilities which Mr. 
Spencer tries to saddle upon our reason. 

A good illustration of the value of this test, is 
given in his criticism of the atheistic, pantheistic, 
and theistic theories of the origin of the universe. 

Mr. Spencer believes that there is a tone of truth 
even in the falsest creed, and that every creed, if ana- 
lyzed, would be found to agree in something, even 
with its seeming contradiction. "To doubt this 
would be to discredit too profoundly the average 
human intelligence." Hence, if we should lay aside 
from the various creeds all that is peculiar to each, and 
find that in which they all agree, this common article 
of faith would possess the very highest claim to our ac- 
ceptance. Accordingly he summons the atheist, pan- 
theist, and theist, in turn, to appear for examination. 

Between atheist and theist, it would seem a hope- 
less task to look for common ground ; something 
like harmonizing yes and no in some higher unity. 
But great is logic, and Mr. Spencer proves equal to 
the task. The result of the examination is the proof 



34 Review of Herbert Speruer. 

that " not only is no current hypothesis tenable, but 
also that no tenable hypothesis can be framed." The 
" soul of truth," existing in these diverse statements, 
turns out to be that none of the parties know any 
thing about the matter. This is what they have 
always been trying to say, but were never able to 
enunciate it until Mr. Spencer helped them. An om- 
nipresent mystery behind the universe, unexplained 
and unexplainable, is the ultimate religious truth in 
which all conflicting creeds agree. 

What now is the reason for involving atheist, pan- 
theist, and theist, in a common condemnation ? It 
is that they all postulate the inconceivable idea of 
self-existence. Each view assumes either the crea- 
tion or the Creator to be self-existent ; and hence all 
are equally untenable. " Differing so widely as they 
seem to do, the atheistic, pantheistic, and theistic 
hypotheses contain the same ultimate element. It is 
impossible to avoid making the assumption of self- 
existence somewhere : and whether that assumption 
be made nakedly, or under complicated disguises, it 
is equally vicious, equally unthinkable." — P. 36. 

I suspect that neither atheist, pantheist, nor theist 
would be seriously dismayed by this argument. For 
whether it be unthinkable or not, it is one of the 
strongest affirmations of the reason that there is 
self-existence somewhere ; the question between the 
theist and his opponents being, where that existence 
is to be found. It is in the material universe, say 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 35 

the atheist and pantheist. That cannot be, says the 
theist The visible universe bears every mark of 
dependence ; there must be some being apart from 
this, uncaused and independent. " Stop," says Mr. 
Spencer, " if we admit that there can be something 
uncaused there is no reason to assume a cause for 
any thing." — P. 37. "Those who cannot conceive a 
self-existent universe, and who therefore assume a 
creator of the universe, take for granted that they 
can conceive a self-existent Creator. The mystery 
which they recognize in this great fact surrounding 
them on every side, they transfer to an alleged 
source of this great fact, and then suppose they 
have solved the mystery." — P. 35. "Lastly, even 
supposing that the genesis of the universe could 
really be represented in thought as the result of an 
external agency, the mystery would be as great as 
ever ; for there would arise the question, How came 
there to be an external agency?" — P. 35. These 
statements would have some force if the law of cau- 
sation committed us to the absurdity of an infinite 
series. If every thing must have a cause, then 
causes themselves must have causes, and so on in 
endless regression. In that case it would be as well 
to break the chain in one place as in another ; and 
it would be strictly true that "if there can be any 
thing uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause 
for any thing." But the law of causation commits 
us to no such absurdity as an infinite series of causes. 



36 . Review of Herbert Spencer. 

It is not existence, as such, that demands a cause, 
but a changing existence. Could the universe be 
brought to a standstill so that all change should 
cease, the demand for a cause would never arise. It 
is entrance and exit only that give rise to this de- 
mand. Whatever manifests them must have its. 
cause, whatever does not manifest them can dispense 
with a cause. Mr. Spencer's claim that " Did there 
exist nothing but an immeasurable void, explanation 
would be needed as much as now," is a mistake. It 
is change that suggests causation, the changeless is 
independent and eternal. The dependent suggests 
the independent, and when the mind has reached 
that, it rests. Mr. Spencer himself believes this. He 
cannot rest in the phenomena of the visible universe, 
but insists upon a fundamental reality behind them 
as their abiding cause. And that, too, after telling 
us that, " If we admit there can be any thing un- 
caused, there is no reason to assume a cause for 
any thing." Surely this fundamental reality is an 
intruder if the dictum be true. One or the other 
must leave forthwith. If the dictum goes, Mr. 
Spencer's argument against a self-existent Creator 
falls to the ground ; if the fundamental reality is dis- 
carded, the bottom falls out of his philosophy. And 
now, since the visible universe is but a vast aggre- 
gation of events, of entrances into and exits from 
existence, let the reader judge whether Mr. Spencer 
is justified in dismissing the atheistic, pantheistic, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 37 

and theistic hypotheses as equally untenable ; or 
whether the theist is right in passing behind the 
seen and temporal to the unseen and eternal. Sure- 
ly the suicidal proclivities of Mr. Spencer's test of 
knowledge should be restrained. We have before 
found it mowing off its own legs, and here it insists 
upon biting off its own nose. For Mr. Spencer ap- 
parently believes that his " fundamental reality " is 
self-existent ; which assumption, by his own reason- 
ing, makes the "fundamental reality" an "untenable 
hypothesis," involving "symbolic conclusions of the 
illegitimate order." We surely are in a sad pre- 
dicament here. We cannot call the " fundamental 
reality" uncaused, for Mr. Spencer says that, " If we 
admit that any thing can be uncaused, there is no 
reason to assume a cause for any thing." But we 
cannot call it caused, for then it would not be the 
fundamental reality any longer. For the same rea- 
son we cannot call it dependent ; but we cannot call 
it independent, for that involves the idea of self- 
existence, which would make it an " untenable hy- 
pothesis." The beauty of the reasoning will perhaps 
be better appreciated if we see the arguments side 
by side. 

Whatever involves the idea Whatever involves the idea 

of self-existence, is an untenable of self-existence, is an untenable 

hypothesis. hypothesis. 

God involves the idea of self- The fundamental reality in- 

existence. volves the idea of self-existence. 

God is an untenable hypoth- The fundamental reality is net 

esis. an untenable hypothesis. 



38 Review of Herb eit Spencer. 

The logic is not the best, to be sure, but the gen- 
eralship is of the very highest order. The only 
explanation I can think of is, that Mr. Spencer has 
one kind of logic for religious ideas, and another 
kind for his own — a view which the internal evi- 
dence seems to support. 

As the result of his criticism of scientific and relig- 
ious ideas, Mr. Spencer concludes that a "fundamental 
reality" underlies the universe, and that this is "un- 
known and unknowable." Religion ends in mystery, 
science ends in mystery ; and our highest knowledge 
is to recognize that this mystery is utterly inscrutable. 

To prove that this mystery lies utterly without 
the limits of knowledge, Mr. Spencer appeals to the 
doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, and offers 
the following argument : 

" If, when walking through the fields some day in 
September, you hear a rustle some yards in advance, 
and on observing the ditch side where it occurs, see 
the herbage agitated, you will probably turn toward 
the spot to learn by what this sound and motion are 
produced. As you approach there flutters into the 
ditch a partridge, on seeing which your curiosity is 
satisfied — you have what you call an explanation of 
the appearances. The explanation, mark, amounts 
to this : that whereas throughout you have had 
countless experiences of disturbances among small 
stationary bodies, accompanying the movements of 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 39 

other bodies among them, and have generalized the 
relation between such disturbances and such move- 
ments, you consider this particular disturbance ex- 
plained on finding it to present an instance of the 
like relation. Suppose you catch the partridge, and, 
wishing to ascertain why it did not escape, examine 
it, and find at one spot a slight trace of blood upon 
its feathers. You now understand, as you say, what 
has disabled the partridge. It has been wounded by 
a sportsman — adds another case to the many cases 
already seen by you, of birds being killed or injured 
by the shot discharged at them from fowling-pieces. 
And in assimilating this case to other such cases 
consists your understanding of it. But now, on con- 
sideration, a difficulty suggests itself. Only a single 
shot has struck the partridge, and that not in a vital 
place ; the wings are uninjured, as are also those 
muscles which move them, and the creature proves 
by its struggles that it still has abundant strength. 
Why, then, you inquire of yourself, does it not fly ? 
Occasion favoring, you put the question to an anat- 
omist, who furnishes you with a solution. He points 
out that this solitary shot has passed close to the 
place at which the nerve supplying the wing-muscles 
of one side diverges from the spine ; and that a 
slight injury to the nerve, extending even to the 
rupture of a few fibers, may, by preventing a perfect 
co-ordination in the action of the two wings, destroy 
the power of flight. You are no longer puzzled. But 



40 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

what has happened ? — what has changed your state 
from one of perplexity to one of comprehension ? 
Simply the disclosure of a class of previously known 
cases along with which you can include this case. 
The connection between lesions of the nervous sys- 
tem and paralysis of limbs has been already many 
times brought under your notice ; and here you find 
a relation of cause and effect that is essentially sim- 
ilar." — P. 69. Mr. Spencer claims, justly enough, that 
all scientific explanations are of this order ; they are 
but classifications of particular facts under one more 
general. Thus we explain the sinking of a stone, 
the floating of a cork, the fall of heavy bodies, the 
rise of a balloon, the flow of the rivers, the swell 
of the tides, and the motion of the planets, all, by 
referring them to the general fact of gravitation. 
This is the nature of all scientific explanations. But 
clearly such a process must come to an ultimate fact 
at last which cannot be included in any other, and 
so remain unexplained and unexplainable. " For 
if the successively deeper interpretations of nature, 
which constitute advancing knowledge, are mere 
inclusions of special truths in general truths, and 
of general truths in truths still more general ; it ob- 
viously follows that the most general truth, not ad- 
mitting of inclusion in any other, does not admit of 
interpretation. Manifestly, as the most general cog- 
nition at which we arrive cannot be reduced to a 
more general one, it cannot be understood. Of ne- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 41 

cessity, therefore, explanation must inevitably bring 
us down to the inexplicable. The deepest truth we 
can get at must be unaccountable. Comprehension 
must become something other than comprehension 
before the ultimate fact can be comprehended." 

-P- 73- 

Mr. Spencer's argument proves an unexplainable, 
not an unknowable ; for, though we cannot give the 
rationale of that final fact, by the supposition, we 
know it as a fact. To return to our illustration, the 
essential nature of gravitation is a profound mystery ; 
but gravitation as a fact, the law of its variation, the 
truth that it includes all the particular facts mentioned, 
all these things science regards as established be- 
yond question. Clearly, the incomprehensible may 
be known as a fact, and its laws and relations may 
also constitute a part of our most assured knowledge. 
Mr. Spencer's conclusion is the extremely common- 
place one, that argument and all explanation post- 
ulate something as their foundation or support. I 
admit most cheerfully that explanation must assume 
the unexplainable, or independent ; but I deny that 
this unexplainable is the unknowable. Our own ex- 
istence is wrapped in the profoundest mystery, but 
that does not destroy the fact that we have a large 
knowledge of human nature. No more can Mr. 
Spencer argue from the mystery of the Divine 
existence, to our necessary ignorance of the Divine 
nature. 



42 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

Mr. Spencer, however, has great faith in this argu- 
ment, and advances it again in the following form : 

" Every complete act of consciousness, besides 
distinction and relation, also implies likeness. Be- 
fore it can become an idea, or constitute a piece of 
knowledge, a mental state must not only be known 
as not only separate in kind from certain foregoing 
states to which it is known as related by succession, 
but it must be known as of the same kind with cer- 
tain other foregoing states. ... In brief, a true cog- 
nition is possible only through an accompanying 
recognition. Should it be objected that, if so, there 
cannot be a first cognition, and hence no cognition, 
the reply is, that cognition proper arises gradually — 
that during the first stage of incipient intelligence, 
before the feelings produced by intercourse with the 
world have been put in order, there are no cognitions, 
strictly so called ; and that, as every infant shows us, 
these slowly emerge out of the confusion of unfolding 
consciousness as fast as these experiences are ar- 
ranged into groups — as fast as the most frequently 
repeated sensations, and their relations to each other, 
become familiar enough to admit of their recognition, 
as such or such, whenever they recur. Should it be 
further objected, that if cognition presupposes recog- 
nition there can be no cognition even by an adult, of 
an object never before seen, there is still the sufficient 
answer, that in so far as it is not assimilated to pre- 
viously-seen objects it is not known, and it is known 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 43 

in so far as it is assimilated to them. Of this para- 
dox the interpretation is, that an object is classifiable 
in various ways, with various degrees of complete- 
ness. An animal hitherto unknown (mark the word), 
though not referable to any established species or 
genus, is yet recognized as belonging to one of the 
larger divisions — mammals, birds, reptiles, or fishes ; 
or should it be so anomalous that its alliance with 
any of these is not determinate, it may yet be classed 
as vertebrate or invertebrate ; or if it be one of those 
organisms of which it is doubtful whether the ani- 
mal or vegetal characteristics predominate, it is still 
known as a living body; even should it be ques- 
tioned whether it is organic, it remains beyond ques- 
tion that it is a material object, and is cognized by 
being recognized as such. Whence it is manifest 
that a thing is perfectly known only when it is in all 
respects like certain things previously observed ; that 
in proportion to the number of respects in which it 
is unlike them, is the extent to which it is unknown ; 
and that hence, when it has absolutely no attribute in 
common with any thing else, it must be absolutely 
beyond the bounds of knowledge." — P. 79. 

To the objection that if a true cognition implies 
recognition, there can be no first cognition, and hence 
no cognition, Mr. Spencer's reply that cognition 
proper arises gradually, is entirely inadequate. If 
all cognition presupposes recognition, then a first 
cognition is a manifest impossibility. Recognition, 



44 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

being cognition over again, must of necessity follow 
upon cognition ; but cognition must also follow rec- 
ognition ; that is, each must follow the other, and 
hence both are impossible. But Mr. Spencer escapes 
from this dilemma by teaching that cognition proper 
arises gradually in childhood ; and thus we get the 
raw material for future cognitions. But if cognition 
proper arises gradually in childhood, why may it not 
arise gradually in manhood as well ? Mr. Spencers 
answer to the objection is a good specimen of a 
favorite method with the associational psychologists. 
Whenever one of their fundamental assumptions is 
contradicted by the experience of manhood, it is easy 
to say that in infancy — a period of which any thing 
can be affirmed, since nothing is remembered — it 
was strictly true. This is certainly making the most 
of the early years. The " small child " is put into the 
associational mill, and after a little brisk grinding is 
brought out with a complete set of mental furniture. 
When the critic reaches the spot he is blandly told 
that the work is done, and the machinery put away. 
He is further warned that any search on his part will 
be useless ; as the traces of manufacture have been 
entirely obliterated. 

The argument of the quotation just made is the 
fallacy we have already examined—the confounding 
the unexplainable, or unclassifiable, with the un- 
knowable. Plainly, we can only give the mtion@te 
of classifiable facts, for explanation is only classifica- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 45 

tion ; but the facts must be known as facts before 
they can be classified. A thing in which we detect 
no likeness to other things is not an unknowable, 
but an unclassified thing. When we are enabled to 
classify a body of heterogeneous facts, we get a 
knowledge of their relations to each other, but no 
new knowledge of them as facts. To say that such 
facts can only be cognized by being recognized as 
matter, is to deny them to our perceptive faculties, 
and delude ourselves into thinking that this is a fail- 
ure of the knowing power. 

As a philosophical doctrine this relativity theory 
is not well-defined. It is, in fact, a combination of 
several doctrines, some of which are not only true, 
but truisms ; while the rest look marvelously like 
something " pseud." We have already had some con- 
fused illustrations of it, let us examine it further. 

Sometimes it means that we can only know things 
as related to ourselves, that is, that we have only 
such knowledge as our faculties can give us. In one 
sense this is axiomatic. All knowledge implies a 
thing to be known, and a faculty for knowing it. 
Clearly, then, we can know only those things, or 
properties of things, which are related or adjusted to 
our faculties. An eye could not see sound ; an ear 
could not hear vision. It is said that there are 
sounds of so high a pitch as to be above the limits 
of our hearing, and others again of so low a pitch as 



46 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

to be below them. Our knowledge of sound then is 
relative — we hear only those notes which are properly 
related to the ear. It is very conceivable that there 
should be organisms which could perceive sounds 
that range far above the limits of our hearing, and 
perhaps none of those which we hear. Now, in each 
case, the knowledge of sound is relative ; but are we 
to say in such a case that neither party knows any 
thing about sound ? Two men stand on the shore 
and look seaward. One has stronger eyesight than 
the other, and hence the range of vision is relative; 
but the fact of vision is none the less real. Certainly 
it would not be claimed, because one sees farther 
than the other, that both see nothing. Plainly, 
nescience finds no support from this interpretation 
of the doctrine of relativity. Let there be other be- 
ings than men, and let their faculties far outrun ours, 
or be altogether different from ours, the fact casts no 
discredit on what knowledge our faculties do give us. 

Again, the doctrine sometimes reads : We cannot 
know pure being — that is, being without attributes — 
but only the attributes of being. 

This, I conceive, is not an exact statement of our 
knowledge. It is not true that we know attributes 
alone, but rather, we know being as possessing attri- 
butes. Thus, we do not know redness, hardness, 
squareness, but a red, hard, square thing. All our 
knowledge begins with a knowledge of things ; and 
it is not until considerable progress has been made 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 47 

in abstract thinking that a knowledge of attributes 
becomes possible. But let the doctrine stand as 
stated, still nescience derives no support from it. 
We cannot know pure being for the sufficient reason, 
that there is no such thing to know. All this talk 
about pure being arises from a pernicious habit into 
which thinkers fall, of thinking that whatever can be 
separated in thought, can also be separated in fact. 
A beam has an upper and lower side, either of which 
can be thought of separately, but no beam can exist 
without both sides. Being without attributes, is as 
impossible as a stick without two ends ; and to argue 
about pure being is as absurd as to talk of pure 
" upper-sideness," or absolute " one-endness." But 
supposing such a fiction to exist, we cheerfully ad- 
mit that we can know nothing about it ; nor need 
one be much distressed at the loss. Matter or spirit, 
the finite or the infinite, apart from their properties 
or powers, excite very little curiosity in our mind. 
Imagine a metaphysical engineer who, knowing how 
his engine is made, how it works, what it can do, etc., 
should say that this is no knowledge at all, and insist 
upon knowing the "absolute" engine, or engine "in 
itself." But if any one still believes that pure being 
is not pure nonsense, and is grieved at his inability 
to know it, be it far from me to disturb, or speak 
lightly of, so profound a sorrow. For myself, how- 
ever, if the relativist will allow me to know, not being 
in itself, but the powers, the properties of being, I 



48 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

am content. The attributes of being are its mani- 
festations ; and this proposition that we cannot know 
pure being amounts to the harmless truism, that un- 
manifested being must remain unknown. 

These forms of the relativity doctrine give no sup- 
port to nescience, and are but laborious attempts to 
establish the truisms, that all knowledge must be re- 
lated to our faculties, and that whatever is not thus 
related cannot come into knowledge ; both of which 
might have been admitted beforehand ; but to establish 
his theory, Mr. Spencer must deny that our faculties 
give us the real properties of being, or the objective 
reality of things. This is what he means ; and this 
is the tacit assumption of his entire argument. 

Mr. Spencer is not an idealist. He insists as 
strongly upon the existence of a fundamental reality 
as upon our ignorance of its nature. " It is rigor- 
ously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a 
knowledge of appearances only, without at the same 
time conceiving a reality of which they are appear- 
ances ; for appearance without reality is unthink- 
able." — P. 88. Now, it seems to me that this know- 
nothing position is the most untenable possible ; that 
Mr. Spencer has been so flushed with his victory over 
the " pseud-ideas " as to push the rout too far, and in 
attempting to drive them into the abysses, has himself 
tumbled in after them. The claim that all we know is 
unreal, and that all we do not know is real, looks very 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 49 

much like an "untenable hypothesis." We have already 
seen what cruel contradiction the fundamental reality 
suffers from Mr. Spencer's own logic : I wish now to 
show that Mr. Spencer must either go farther, or not 
so far ; that he must either adopt absolute idealism, 
or admit the objective validity of our knowledge of 
things. To deny a thing to thought, and save it to 
existence, is impossible ; for to risk a logical para- 
dox — nothing which is said to exist can be declared 
unknowable until something is known about it. To 
be unknowable it must fulfill certain conditions, and 
have certain marks to distinguish it from the know- 
able ; and unless one assumes a knowledge of its 
nature, he cannot declare it unknowable. In his 
present position this modern Samson parallels the 
ancient by pulling the temple on his own head. 

In the statement that our faculties do not give us 
the objective reality of things, we recognize at once 
the mental forms of Kant. Let us see the logical 
result of such teaching. 

Matter is said to have form ; has it really form ? 
It has for us, says the know-nothing, but it has no 
form in itself. Some higher intelligence might see 
it as formless. Then the form which I attribute to 
it is a phantom of my own creation. 

Matter is said to resist ; has it really any such 

power ? Again, the answer is, that matter "in itself" 

has no such power. We must conclude, then, that 

the resistance of matter is a fiction of the mind that 
4 



50 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

affirms it ; as ghosts exist only in the eye that sees 
them. 

The line of argument is evident. We have but to 
call up in turn the various attributes of matter, and 
win from the know-nothing the confession that all we 
think we find in matter is but the shadow of the 
mind itself. But how, then, do we know that there is 
any "fundamental reality," or "thing in itself?" If 
all that we do know is imaginary, there seems to be 
no good reason for supposing that all we do not know 
is real. If mental limits, or mental forms, can create 
so much, it is very credible that they can create the 
thing outright. 

But it is urged, in reply, the same thing produces 
diverse effects upon different organisms ; and as the 
reality cannot be like all the reports given of it, it is 
most reasonable to suppose it like none of them. 
White light falling on different objects has no tend- 
ency to make them all of the same color, but rather 
makes the particular color of each more vivid : the 
blue becomes bluer, the green becomes greener, etc. 
If we suppose persons to have eyes that see only 
blue or green, their judgment would undoubtedly be, 
every thing is blue or green. Now here we have an 
illustration of the unknown reality (white light) pro- 
ducing effects altogether diverse from itself and from 
each other, (blue light, green light.) 

There are a few stock objections of this kind which 
are of as much value to the know-nothing as the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 51 

** small child " is to the associational psychologist, or 
as the charges of " fetichism," " anthropomorphism," 
and " bibliolatry," are to the theological iconoclast. 
But they amount to nothing. Supposing such a 
queer lot of eyes to exist, where is the contradiction ? 
If light is said to be blue, green, etc., it is only the 
truth : light is blue and green. The error would be 
in affirming it to be only blue or green. If this error 
be avoided, there is no contradiction, and no ground 
for nescience. It is only saying that one eye is 
adapted to the blue ray, and the other to the green. 

The same reasoning applies to the other objections 
which the know-nothing is in the habit of urging 
against the truth of the senses. His hypothetical 
senses, which are to give such different reports of 
things, would in no wise impair the credibility of the 
faculties which we actually have. As a result of 
these considerations, I hold that he must either 
advance or retreat. If mental forms can create so 
much, they can create all. If the known has no root 
in reality, the unknown has surely no better claim. 
Between absolute idealism and the admission that 
our knowledge of things is real, there is no middle 
ground. No mental form, and no relativity of thought, 
can bridge the bottomless pit between. 

But do you mean to say that you have an " abso- 
lute" knowledge of things ? that you know the thing 
"in itself?" What an "absolute" knowledge, etc., 
may be, I am not entirely certain. I only mean to 



52 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

say that what we seem to find in a thing is really 
there ; that we know the thing as it is. There may 
be other beings whose faculties may present the 
same thing to them under an altogether different 
aspect ; but in every case the particular aspect which 
the faculties do present represents the thing as it is. 
We see a thing as square ; there may be beings 
whose faculties do not enable them to apprehend 
form, but all beings who can appreciate form see 
that thing as square. The squareness belongs to 
the thing. We measure the speed of the light, and 
the distances, and magnitudes of the stars ; possibly 
some orders of intelligence might be incapable of ap- 
preciating these ideas, but, for all who can, they re- 
main the same. This is what is meant by saying 
that we know the thing as it is. I suspect, too, that 
this " absolute," " thing in itself," " fundamental 
reality," etc., in the way in which the terms are 
used, is really the very pseudest of pseud-ideas. 
Here is a table which has legs, leaves, top, cover, etc. 
This is beyond question, this is the thing, and this 
is the whole of it. If there be any ghostly, abso- 
lute-fundamental-reality-thing-in-itself table lurking 
around the real one, I am happy to admit that I 
know nothing about it. What do you mean by the 
thing " in itself," apart from the thing as it appears ? 
How do you know that there is any thing "in itself," 
as distinguished from the phenomenal thing ? This 
"in itself" is simply a word-ghost which has been 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 53 

allowed to make a great deal of disturbance, but 
which vanishes when interrogated. Our claim, then, 
is, that what we see in things is really in them, and 
that a denial of this truth leads inevitably to what 
Mr. Spencer calls the " insanities of idealism." His 
claim that it is impossible to get rid of the conscious- 
ness of " an actuality lying behind appearances," and 
that " from this impossibility results our indestructi- 
ble belief in that actuality, (p. 97,) will in no wise 
save him from the abysses. We have an irrepressi- 
ble belief that we see things as they are ; and if we 
could get rid of one belief, we could easily get rid of 
the other. The law of thought which warrants the 
existence of a thing, warrants also the assertion of 
something about it. The fundamental reality must 
either come into knowledge, or go out of existence. 

But in insisting upon the validity of our knowledge 
of matter, it is not meant that we know all about it. 
As we have seen, all knowledge implies both a thing 
to know, and a faculty for knowing it. For sight or 
sound, there must be both the external vibration and 
the adapted organ. It is very credible that new 
senses, or even an intensifying of our present facul- 
ties, should reveal to us properties now unknown. 
An eminent physicist has remarked, that the air still 
retains every sound intrusted to it since the begin- 
ning, and that could our hearing be made more acute 
we might recover again every sound and word that 
has ever floated out on the airy tides. All about us 



54 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

there may be forms of being and of beauty, and 
melodies of unknown harmony, all unseen and un- 
heard, because they do not come within the range of 
our present powers. Matter may have a million as- 
pects of which we can form no idea ; of these we say 
nothing. But whatever sides it may or may not 
have, it certainly has those which we see. To be 
sure, we know only phenomena or appearances — two 
words which are saturated with illusion — but then 
things appear as they are, and not as they are not. 
Indeed, why should it not be so ? Why not perceive 
the very thing, instead of some phantom which has 
no likeness to it whatever ? 

The same general observation is to be made con- 
cerning the laws of pure thought, to which this same 
form of relativity has been applied. We always 
think things in certain relations, as one or many, as 
substance or attribute, as cause or effect, as necessary 
or contingent. These are the categories, the neces- 
sary affirmations of the human mind. They consti- 
tute the foundation of our knowledge, and the law of 
all our thinking. But the know-nothing says that 
these, while true for us, may not be true for other 
orders of being. I admit that they may be unknown, 
and hence inapplicable to other intelligences, who 
may think things in altogether different relations ; 
but our categories cannot be false for them unless 
they know them. A thing of which one has no 
knowledge is neither false nor true for him, but 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 55 

simply unknown. Philosophy would have been saved 
a great deal of confusion on this point had it been 
kept in mind that false and true apply only to the 
known. The intuitional philosopher, assured of the 
essential truth of the categories, affirms with great 
earnestness that they are true for all possible intelli- 
gence. But it is by no means impossible that other 
order of intelligence should think things in entirely dif- 
ferent relations ; and the nescientist, perceiving this, 
denies the claim of the intuitionist. Now, the proper 
claim is not that our categories are the categories 
of all thought, but that they are essentially true. If 
these hypothetical beings — in whose existence I have 
not much faith— can understand the meaning of our 
categories, it is impossible that they should perceive 
them to be false. There may be beings without the 
idea of number, and to them the equation 3x2 = 6 
would present no idea whatever, and hence would be 
neither false nor true, but unintelligible. But for all 
who have the idea of number, 3 x* 2 = 6 every-where 
and always. Mr. Mill gravely suggests that 2 +2 = 4 
for us, but it is very possible that in some other 
world 2 + 2 = 5. It is possible that, in such other 
world, the equation should be meaningless ; but if the 
inhabitants have a knowledge of numbers, we in- 
sist that it requires much less faith to believe that 
2 + 2 = 4 than to believe Mr. Mill's equation. " What 
presumption ! " says the know-nothing ; " do you 
mean to say that the laws of our thought are true for 



56 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

all intelligence ? " In the sense explained, I mean pre- 
cisely that ; and which, I ask in return, is the greater 
presumption, to teach that 3x2 = 6 every-where and 
always, or to stultify one's self by teaching that in 
some corner or cranny of the universe, and for some 
transcendent intelligence, 3 x 2 = 77 ? There may be 
beings whose thought-processes compare with ours 
as the speed of lightning with the pace of the snail ; 
but the conclusions we reach in our slow advance are 
as true as theirs, though grasped with the swiftness 
of light. We refrain from imposing our categories 
upon other beings, but insist that they are, neverthe- 
less, true. To deny this is to commit intellectual 
suicide, to identify light and darkness, cosmos and 
chaos, being and blank. 

Thus far Mr. Spencer has established nothing which 
could not have been admitted beforehand. He has 
laboriously proved two truisms : first, that all our 
knowledge must be related to our faculties ; and sec- 
ond, that being, without attribute or power or mani- 
festation of any kind, is unknowable ; both of which 
may be admitted without at all impairing the fact 
that what knowledge our faculties do give us is ob- 
jectively real. If, however, he chooses to deny this, 
then, as we have seen, his only landing-place is abso- 
lute idealism, which Mr. Spencer says is insanity. 
As between religion and science, his argument thus 
far tells with equal force against both. Religion in- 
volves unthinkable ideas, which fact Mr, Spencer 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 57 

looks upon as sufficient warrant for banishing it to 
the outer darkness of the unknowable. But science 
also involves equally unthinkable ideas, and must, 
therefore, go along with religion. God, as self-exist- 
ent, is an untenable hypothesis. The fundamental 
reality must also be conceived as self-existent, and 
hence must be set down as an untenable hypothesis. 

But Mr. Spencer has other arguments against the 
validity of religious knowledge ; and though he has 
utterly failed to establish nescience in science, he 
may possibly make it out in religion. The peculiar 
nature of the problem offers abundant opportunity for 
lofty tumbling, and Mr. Spencer avails himself of the 
chance to exhibit some of the most astonishing acro- 
batic feats that philosophy can boast of. The 
question is, Is God an object of knowledge ? the 
fundamental proposition upon which the argument 
is based is, That God must be conceived as first 
cause, infinite, and absolute ; and the claim is, that 
these three conceptions land us in bogs of contra- 
diction in which the speculative intellect can only 
flounder and smother and perish. Mr. Spencer 
quotes from Mr. Mansel as follows : 

" But these three conceptions, the cause, the abso- 
lute, and the infinite, all equally indispensable, do 
they not imply contradictions to each other, when 
viewed in conjunction as attributes of the same be- 
ing ? A cause cannot, as such, be absolute ; the 



58 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. The cause, as 
such, exists only in relation to its effect : the cause 
is a cause of the effect ; the effect is an effect of the 
cause. On the other hand, the conception of the 
absolute implies a possible existence out of all rela- 
tion. We attempt to escape from this apparent con- 
tradiction by introducing the idea of succession in 
time. The absolute exists first by itself, and after- 
ward becomes a cause. But here we are checked by 
the third conception, that of the infinite. How can the 
infinite become that which it was not from the first ? 
If causation is a possible mode of existence, that which 
exists without causing is not infinite ; that which be- 
comes a cause has passed beyond its former limits." 

Before continuing the quotation let us ask one or 
two questions. If "the conception of the absolute 
implies a possible existence out of all relation," not a 
necessary, but a possible existence apart from rela- 
tion, in what is its absoluteness impaired if it should 
become a cause ? Would the possibility of its sep- 
arate existence be any the less ? Would its inde- 
pendence, which is its true absoluteness, be at all 
impaired ? Certainly not ; and the whole of this con- 
fusion falls to the ground. But Mr. Spencer con- 
tinues his quotation : 

" Supposing the absolute to become a cause, it will 
follow that it operates by means of free-will and con- 
sciousness. For a necessary cause cannot be con- 
ceived as absolute and infinite. If necessitated by 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 59 

something beyond itself, it is thereby limited by 
a superior power ; and if necessitated by itself, 
it has in its own nature a necessary relation to 
its effect. The act of causation must therefore be 
voluntary, and volition is only possible in a conscious 
being. But consciousness, again, is only conceivable 
as a relation. There must be a conscious subject, 
and an object of which he is conscious. The subject 
is a subject to the object ; the object is an object to 
the subject ; and neither can exist by itself as the 
absolute. This difficulty, again, may be for the mo- 
ment evaded by distinguishing between the absolute 
as related to another, and the absolute as related to 
itself. The absolute, it may be said, may possibly be 
conscious, provided it is only conscious of itself. But 
this alternative is, in ultimate analysis, no less self- 
destructive than the other. For the object of con- 
sciousness, whether a mode of the subject's existence 
or not, is either created in and by the act of con- 
sciousness, or has an existence independent of it. In 
the former case the object depends upon the sub- 
ject, and the subject alone is the true absolute. In 
the latter case the subject depends upon the object, 
and the object alone is the true absolute. Or if we 
attempt a third hypothesis, and maintain that each 
exists independently of the other, we have no abso- 
lute at all, but only a pair of relatives ; for co-exist- 
ence, whether in consciousness or not, is itself a 
relation." — P. 39. 



60 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

I have often wondered whether Mr. Mansel when 
he wrote this, or Mr. Spencer when he quoted it, was 
really serious or not. For, with the exception of Mr. 
Mill's famous conclusion that matter is an affection 
of mind, and mind a product of matter, this is the 
finest specimen of amphibious logic I have ever met 
with. Mr. Spencer begins by assuming that there is 
an absolute, and ends by telling us that there is no 
absolute : "for co-existence, whether in consciousness 
or not, is itself a relation." From this, the conclu- 
sion is irresistible that there is now no absolute in 
the universe, and never will be until God has cast all 
created being back into nothingness. For we exist ; 
God co-exists, and hence is not absolute at present, 
but relative. But if this thing which can only exist 
alone be the true absolute, Mr. Spencer is very right 
in saying that we cannot know it. For it is plain 
that the absolute cannot be this absolute, until we 
have become non-existent ; and then there would be 
very grave obstacles to our pursuit of knowledge. 

But the absolute with which Mr. Spencer began 
the paragraph is one that can co-exist with the rela- 
tive, at least we must suppose so ; for it is incredible 
that he meant to waste all this argument on a non- 
existence. The conception of this absolute, he says, 
"implies a possible existence out of all relation." 
Mark, not a necessary, not even an actual existence 
apart from relation, but a possible one ; that is, an 
existence dependent on nothing else. This absolute 



Review of Herbert Spe?icer. 61 

we cannot know because of the hostility of the idea 
of a first cause. 

Now why do we affirm absolute being at all ? Only 
as the support of contingent or related being. What 
kind of an absolute do we affirm ? Not one out of 
all relation, but out of necessary or dependent rela- 
tion. Mr. Spencer recognizes this in his definition, 
and forgets it in his application. In the definition it 
is what holds no necessary relation. " Its conception 
implies a possible existence apart from all relation." 
In the reasoning it becomes that which must exist 
apart from all relation, as in the example quoted : 
" co-existence, whether in consciousness or not, is it- 
self a relation." Now the absence of restriction, not 
the absence of relation, is the characteristic of the only 
absolute that can be rationally affirmed. The only ab- 
solute being that we know is found in causal connec- 
tion with the universe, and is affirmed for the sole 
and single purpose of supplying a landing-place for 
our thought. We rise to that being by the law of 
causation ; but, forsooth, we cannot leave it by the 
same law. This absolute of Mr. Spencer's is the 
veriest ingrate : it owes its existence to the law of 
causation — for we should never affirm an absolute, ex- 
cept as the support of related being — and now, like 
some naughty children, it refuses to acknowledge its 
parentage. At the bare mention of cause, it begins 
to bristle up, puts on airs, and declares that, being 
absolute, it knows nothing about causes. The fact 



62 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

is that this absolute, which Hamilton, Mansel, and 
Spencer have conjured up, is a myth of their own 
imaginations, and has no other existence. Philoso- 
phy has allowed itself to be browbeaten, and knowl- 
edge has disowned itself, at the bidding of a non- 
existence. All the arguments of these doughty 
philosophers about the incompatibility of the con- 
ceptions of the absolute and the first cause are 
reduced to idle words, by the fact that the only abso- 
lute in which there is the slightest reason for believ- 
ing, is known as the first cause. Of course, such an 
absolute God will be in relation to his universe, and 
hence will be knowable, for the relative is conceded 
to knowledge. 

Hamilton and Mansel taught that our conception 
of the absolute is purely negative. Mr. Spencer 
seeing that this view must lead to a negation of the 
absolute, since a negative conception can represent 
nothing positive, sets himself to oppose it. In so 
doing he comes very near the true doctrine of the 
absolute, but in saving the doctrine he makes sad 
work with his philosophy. He says : 

" Our conception of the relative itself disappears 
if our conception of the absolute is a pure negation. 
... It is admitted, or rather contended, that the 
consciousness of a relation implies a consciousness 
of both the related members. If we are required to 
conceive the relation between the relative and the 
non-relative, without being conscious of both, we are 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 63 

in fact required to compare that of which we are con- 
scious with that of which we are not conscious — the 
act itself being an act of consciousness, and only- 
possible through a consciousness of both its objects. 
What then becomes of the assertion that ' the abso- 
lute is conceived merely by a negation of conceiv- 
ability,' or as ' the mere absence of the conditions 
under which thought is possible ?' If the absolute 
is present in thought only as a mere negation, then 
the relation between it and the relative becomes un- 
thinkable, because one of the terms of the relation is 
absent from consciouness. And if this relation is 
unthinkable, then is the relative itself unthinkable 
for want of its antithesis, whence results the disap- 
pearance of all thought whatever." — P. 91. 

Mark, we are forever told that we can never be 
conscious of the absolute. " It is thus manifest that 
a consciousness of the absolute is equally self-con- 
tradictory with that of the infinite." " It is thus 
manifest that, even if we could be conscious of the 
absolute, we could not possibly know that it is the 
absolute ; and as we can be conscious of an object, 
as such, only by knowing it to be what it is, this is 
equivalent to an admission that we cannot be con- 
scious of the absolute at all." " As an object of con- 
sciousness, every thing is necessarily relative.' ' — 
P. 78. In the argument just quoted, however, its 
necessary existence in consciousness is insisted 
upon. We must have a consciousness of the abso- 



64 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

lute, or all thought is impossible. We are told, too, 
that the absolute cannot enter into a relation. But 
here we learn that, unless it is known in relation and 
antithesis to the relative, there is no thinking possi- 
ble. I yield the point ; the reasoning is too cogent 
for resistance. I believe with Mr. Spencer that our 
thinking goes in pairs, as finite and infinite, relative 
and absolute ; and that these appear and disappear 
together. But this makes the absolute a relative, 
cancels the alleged nescience, and brings it once 
more within the domain of thought and knowledge. 

All this is the sheerest jugglery ; it is not argu- 
ment, but logical thimble-rigging. God is related to 
the universe, and in such relation we are not even 
forbidden to know him. Of what use, then, to tell us 
that, apart from all relation to his creation, we could 
not know him ? If there were no other being than 
God, we, being non-existent, could not know him. If 
God were all alone in a mighty void, without any 
manifestation of power, wisdom, or character, no 
more a being than a blank, indifferently existent and 
non-existent — for to deny the absolute the power of 
becoming non-existent would be a limitation — then 
I grant that we could never know him, and would 
not care to know him. But what does this amount 
to ? It is a labored attempt to prove that in eternal 
darkness there would be no light, and no sound in 
everlasting silence. This most petty, pitiful, and 
barren conclusion is all that is reached ; while the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 65 

unhappy looker-on, entangled in verbal confusions, 
and dazzled with a show of logic and science, is left 
to infer that we know nothing of God, or his will con- 
cerning us. The God who has revealed himselfin the 
universe, the author of its glorious beauty, the preserv- 
er of its eternal order, the infinite purity and holiness, 
this God we are permitted to know, and with this 
we can be content. The living God of the Bible is 
is left us ; the sleeping Brahma of the know-nothing, 
we cheerfully resign to the worshiper of the absolute. 

But, finally, God is infinite, and hence we cannot 
know him. Mr. Spencer has some argument on this 
head which must be noticed. As in the case of the 
absolute we remarked a perpetual shuffling from one 
definition to another, so here there is a constant 
shifting from the metaphysical infinite, which is the 
all, to an infinite which can co-exist with the finite. 
In a passage already quoted, Mr. Spencer says, " If 
causation is a possible mode of existence, then that 
which exists without causing is not infinite." There 
is no end to the absurdities that could be evolved by 
employing the principle of this argument. Thus there 
are degrees of activity, and as long as the highest 
degree is not maintained, the possibilities of action 
are not filled up, and the infinite is not the infinite. 
The infinite, then, must always be infinitely active, 
upon pain of losing its infinity. Thus, not only 
would the infinite have its hands full to keep 



66 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

up with its work, but we are met with another 
difficulty : that which is compelled is in subjection, 
and hence cannot be infinite. In spite of its infinite 
efforts it would be forced to take a back seat, and 
allow the compelling principle to assume the throne. 
But, not to repeat the same process with the second 
infinite, we are met by still other difficulties ; this 
same argument can be used to show that any being 
which does not include in itself all other beings, and 
all evil, however vile, is not infinite. Envy and 
malice, and all the depths of iniquity, are possible 
modes of existence. Are we to conclude, then, that 
a God who is not envious and malicious is not infi- 
nite ? At all events, it would be a blessing not to 
know such an infinite. Again, if the infinite includes 
all being, it includes us also ; in which case, since we 
belong to the infinite, there seems to be no reason 
why we should not know the infinite. Or, possibly, 
the infinite is the only reality, and we are shows and 
shadows ; in which case the question disappears into 
zero along with us. There is no end, I say again, to 
the absurdities that may be evolved by employing 
the principle of Mr. Spencer's argument. 

When we inquired after the origin of our idea 
of the absolute, we found that Hamilton and 
his followers had been busying themselves with a 
myth of their own fancy, in whose actual existence 
there is not even the shadow of a reason for believ- 
ing. To put all their arguments to rout, it was only 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 67 

necessary to inquire what kind of an absolute the 
mind really does affirm. So in the case of the in- 
finite, the argument is altogether about a nonentity. 
The metaphysical infinite to which Mr. Spencer's 
reasoning only applies is but a fancy of the meta- 
physicians. All knowledge assumes the reality of 
self. If we are not sure of our own existence we are 
sure of nothing. We are sure, too, that we are our- 
selves, and not some other. Now any doctrine which 
traverses these certainties breaks down the possi- 
bility of any knowledge. If we can be deceived in 
these things, we can be sure of nothing whatever. 
Now the metaphysical infinite about which Mr. 
Spencer is reasoning, does just this thing. Either 
we lose our personality in the infinite, or we lose it 
in zero ; we are merged into the infinite, or we 
vanish into the void ; and either alternative makes 
all knowledge impossible. The very affirmation of 
such an infinite is suicidal. The moment that it is 
made all our beliefs become untrustworthy, and all 
argument must cease. And yet we have great phi- 
losophers, like Hamilton, constructing this elaborate 
contradiction, and then parading the thing about as 
beyond the scope of knowledge. And philosophy 
turns pale, and religion takes its flight, at the bid- 
ding of this wretched metaphysical abortion. The 
only infinite being in whom there is any warrant 
whatever for believing, is one whose notice nothing 
can escape, and whose power nothing can defy ; 



68 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

whose years are eternal, and whose wisdom compre- 
hends all being. This is the only infinity that can 
be rationally attributed to God. I grant, nay, insist, 
that God is not metaphysically infinite. If, however, 
any one feels aggrieved at this claim, he is at liberty 
to go into mourning over his miserable abstraction 
as soon as he pleases. Common minds cannot un- 
derstand, much less sympathize with, so profound 
a grief. Now, against the knowledge of such an infi- 
nite as I have mentioned, there is not a word of valid 
argument in all that has been written on this subject. 
The God who upholds all things by the word of his 
power, and rules in heaven and in earth, is conceded 
to our knowledge. All that is made out is that if 
God were every thing and we nothing, our pursuit of 
knowledge would be very much embarrassed. 

However, not to rest too much on my own repre- 
sentation, I shall allow Mr. Spencer to argue his 
own case. Against a knowledge of the infinite, he 
urges the following difficulties : 

"The very conception of consciousness, in what- 
ever mode it may be manifested, necessarily implies 
distinction between one object and another. To be 
conscious, we must be conscious of something ; and 
that something can only be known as what it is, 
by being distinguished from that which it is not. 
But distinction is necessarily limitation ; for if one 
object is to be distinguished from another, it must 
possess some form of existence which the other has 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 69 

hot, or it must not possess some form which the 
other has. But it is obvious that the infinite 
cannot be distinguished from the finite by the 
absence of any quality which the finite possesses, 
for such absence would be a limitation. Nor 
yet can it be distinguished by the presence of an 
attribute which the finite has not ; for, as no finite 
part can be a constituent of an infinite whole, this 
differential characteristic must itself be infinite, and 
must at the same time have nothing in common 
with the finite. We are thus thrown back upon our 
former impossibility ; for this second infinite will be 
distinguished from the finite by the absence of qual- 
ities which the latter possesses. A consciousness 
of the infinite, as such, thus necessarily involves a 
self-contradiction ; for it implies the recognition, 
by limitation and difference, of that which can only 
be given as unlimited and indifferent." — P. j6. 

This argument relates only to that metaphysical 
infinite, which we have already seen to be a myth, and 
which therefore needs no further notice. One of the 
great fallacies of this philosophy, however, appears here 
— that to know things by distinction and difference is 
a mental weakness. Now, I do not like to be presump- 
tuous ; but, with all deference to the great philoso- 
phers who have held this view, I must think that the 
reason why we know things by difference is that they 
are different. If they differed not in attribute, nor 
in space, nor in time, they would be the same. This 



yo Review of Herbert Spencer. 

power of knowing things apart is a weakness, is it ? 
Are we to suppose, then, that there is some absolute 
or transcendent intellect which sees all things alike, 
detecting no difference between yes and no, good 
and evil, being and blank ? Such a thing would 
be, not absolute intelligence, but absolute insanity. 
Because we are not thus highly gifted, it is held that 
we cannot know the infinite ! 

But, for the sake of progress in the argument, let 
us grant that we cannot reach the infinite ; still, before 
the impossibility of communion is affirmed, another 
question must be considered : Can the infinite reach 
us ? This is a question which Mr. Spencer entirely 
ignores. Intent only on casting opprobrium upon 
the human faculties, he forgets that, at the same 
time, he is charging inabilities upon the infinite too. 
The moment we read the question in this order, all 
Mr. Spencer's arguments turn traitor, and fire into 
his own ranks. Inasmuch as the infinite includes 
all possibilities, it of course includes the possibility 
of self-revelation. Mr. Spencer is often praised for 
his " severe logic," and I have even seen him styled a 
" modern Aristotle " by some enthusiastic admirer ; 
but I confess that passages like the following stag- 
ger me : " But it is obvious that the infinite cannot 
be distinguished, as such, from the finite by the 
absence of any quality which the finite possesses, 
for such absence would be a limitation." — P. 77. 
On reading this I took heart ; the infinite is all that 



Review of Herbert Spencer. Ji 

the finite is, and more. It is their living, conscious 
intelligence. It is, too, a free mind like our own. 
In it abide all thoughts of beauty, and all love of 
good One phase of the infinite lies over against 
our finite nature, and runs parallel with it ; and 
through that phase the finite and the infinite can 
commune. All these beliefs I based upon Mr. 
Spencer's declaration. But my satisfaction was 
short-lived. On page III, the claim that "the uni- 
verse is the manifestation and abode of a free mind 
like our own," is given as an illustration of the 
" impiety of the pious." Is it possible ? Why, have 
we not just learned that the infinite must have 
all that the finite has ? Is this the " severe logic " 
of the " modern Aristotle ? " I wonder what the 
ancient Aristotle would have said to this ! The 
infinite must be every thing ; yet, to say that it is 
living, conscious intelligence is the vilest fetichism. 
It must possess all power and transcend all law, yet 
has not the power of revelation. Able to sow space 
with suns and systems, to scatter beauty broadcast 
like the light, to maintain the whole in everlasting 
rhythm ; but utterly unable to reach the human 
soul ! Mr. Spencer has much to say about contra- 
dictions ; let the reader judge whose is the contra- 
diction here. By his own reasoning he is involved 
in the most perfect dilemma possible : if God be 
infinite he can reach us ; if not infinite we can reach 
him. In either case communion is possible. 



72 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

But here, as in the case of matter, while insisting 
upon a real knowledge of God, I am very far from 
claiming a complete one. Religion does not pretend 
to give a rationale of the Divine existence any more 
than of our own. The mystery of existence is 
equally insoluble in both cases ; and some facts, 
not some explanations, are all that can possibly 
be given. " Who can search out the Almighty to 
perfection ? " has been the language of the best re- 
ligious thinkers from the time of Job until now. As 
little, if not less, patience is due to those geog- 
raphers of the Divine nature who know every thing, 
as to the know-nothing who leaves us in total 
ignorance. All that is claimed is that we have a 
real, though finite, knowledge of the Deity — not an 
infinite thought, but a finite thought about the infi- 
nite, which, like the infinite series of the mathe- 
matician, is true as far as it goes, though car- 
ried to only a limited number of terms. All our 
science and all our theology are but the slightest 
surface-play on the bosom of fathomless mystery ; 
but this is a very different thing from saying that 
what we do know is untrustworthy. Measureless 
mystery wraps us round, and gulfs of nescience yawn 
on every side, but what we do know is sure. The 
little island of knowledge, though washed on every 
side by the boundless ocean of the unknown, is still 
anchored in reality, and is not a cloud-bank which 
may at any moment disappear into the void, This 



Revietv of Herbert Spencer. 73 

is our claim, and its denial can only result in " the 
insanities of idealism." 



But it is time to bring this discussion to a close. 
We have met with laborious proofs of truisms, and 
have wandered through mazes of paralogisms which 
have disappeared upon accurate definition. Nothing 
has been made out that could not have been admitted 
beforehand. The argument has been made up of 
" words, words, words " — of words either without 
meaning, or with a totally false one. The terms ab- 
solute and infinite, upon which so much reliance is 
placed, are found upon examination to totally repu- 
diate the meaning put upon them. I shall give one 
more quotation from Mr. Spencer's discussion of the 
unknowable, and it is a fit companion to the con- 
fusions already noticed. There is an old satire often 
urged against religion ; so old, indeed, that what little 
point it ever had has been lost for ages. It runs back 
to the time of Xenophanes, and has been repeated in 
various ways ever since. Xenophanes used oxen and 
lions for comparison. Mr. Theodore Parker improved 
on this, and introduced the novelty of a buffalo. He 
supposes that a buffalo, arguing as the natural theo- 
logians do, would conclude that God has horns and 
hoofs. I have even known a mole to be used to 
illustrate this powerful irony. Of course the inge- 
nious and witty conclusion was that a mole could 
only argue to a God with fur and paws. Mr. Spencer 



74 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

believes that " volumes might be written on the im- 
piety of the pious," and he accordingly proceeds to 
lash said impiety by dressing up the old satire in 
,this form : 

" The attitude thus assumed can be fitly repre- 
sented only by developing a simile long current in 
theological controversies — the simile of the watch. 
If for a moment we made the grotesque supposition 
that the tickings and other movements of a watch 
constituted a kind of consciousness, and that a 
watch possessed of such consciousness insisted upon 
regarding the watchmaker's actions as determined, 
like its own, by springs and escapements, we should 
only complete a parallel of which religious teachers 
think much. And .were we to suppose that a watch, 
not only formulated the cause of its existence in 
these mechanical terms, but held that watches were 
bound out of reverence so to formulate this cause, 
and even vituperated as atheistic watches any that 
did not so venture to formulate it, we should merely 
illustrate the presumption of theologians by carrying 
their own arguments a step further." — P. no. 

This is extremely severe, no doubt ; and if theo- 
logians taught that God has legs and arms, parts and 
passions, the satire might have some point ; but 
since they expressly forbid such an assumption, it 
is difficult to tell where the force of the " grotesque 
supposition" lies. For if that philosophical buffalo, 
that ingenious mole, and that "grotesque" watch* 



Review of Herbert Spencer, 75 

should argue, not to horns and hoofs, fur and paws, 
" springs and escapements," but to intelligence in 
their maker, they would not be very far astray. If 
this thinking, conscious watch should infer that it 
had a thinking, conscious maker, it would be on the 
right track. Only remember that religion does not 
attribute organs and form to God, and the logical 
value of the " grotesque supposition " is all gone ; 
though, to be sure, the wit remains to please us. 
And now that Mr. Spencer has kindly developed the 
simile, I know not that his own attitude can be 
more fitly represented than by its further develop- 
ment. Suppose that this grotesque watch should turn 
know-nothing, and insist that a belief in a thinking, 
conscious watchmaker is fetichism, and should begin 
to "vituperate" all watches who were stupid and 
superstitious enough to believe in a watchmaker, 
instead of adopting the higher and truer view that 
watches evolve themselves from the unknowable by 
changing "from an indefinite, incoherent homoge- 
neity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through 
continuous differentiations and integrations ; " why 
clearly the watch would make a fool of itself, espe- 
cially if it " vituperated " at any great length. And 
all this but illustrates Mr. Spencer's presumption by 
carrying his own argument a step further. I mean 
no disrespect to Aristotle, either the ancient or the 
modern ; but I must think that, until this metaphor- 
ical watch turned know-nothing, and began to vitu- 



y6 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

perate its simpler neighbors, it ticked off better logic 
than Mr. Spencer has done. 

My excuse for this long and dry discussion is the 
religious importance of the question. The only im- 
portant bearing of the nescience doctrine is a religious 
one. Science would go on in just the same way 
as at present, collecting and coordinating its facts, 
though the facts were proved to be phantoms. Com- 
mon life would experience no change. The most 
thorough-going know-nothing would be as eager to 
get bread as the realist ; he would be as careful to 
keep out of a relative fire or a relative river, as out 
of an absolute one. In all these cases the practical 
necessity would override the speculative error. 

But it is not so in morals and religion. There we 
are not forced to act ; there we are constantly seek- 
ing some excuse for inaction. Even the suspicion 
that our religious ideas are delusions leads to a 
speedy relaxation of moral effort ; as they know too 
well who have at any time made nescience their the- 
ology. To declare our knowledge imperfect and 
inadequate, is admissible ; but to declare it utterly 
false, is fatal to religion. It is useless to leave us our 
religious ideas as regulative truths — that is, things 
good for us to believe, but without foundation in fact. 
A regulative truth will regulate until one discovers 
the fraud ; but he must have very little knowledge 
of human nature who imagines that it will have any 
authority after the trick has been found out. These 



Review of Herbert Spencer. JJ 

gleams of good that sometimes visit us, these occa- 
sional intimations of a solemn beauty and a perfect 
purity, these undying suspicions of conscience which 
we have fancied are tokens of a will and holiness 
more august than our own — all these things, which 
we thought point upward to God, are found to point 
nowhere, and are but magnificent will-o'-the-wisps. 
Why pursue them ? It might be safe to follow them, 
but it might also be dangerous. Who can tell into 
what bogs they may lead and leave one ? The only 
rational thing to do is to ignore them. Proved to be 
phantoms, they shall delude us no longer. No, out 
of this blank abyss of total darkness, neutral alike 
to good and evil, no inspiration of the soul can come. 
Religion cannot live on nescience, and reverence is 
impossible toward a blank. Though, to be sure, we 
now see through a glass darkly, yet the image there 
discerned must not be wholly distorted. As we 
think of the infinite past and the infinite to come, it 
becomes plain that there is much in the Infinite One 
which we can never hope to understand, but upon 
which we can only gaze ; yet must not all be wrapped 
in shadow ; something must pierce through to the 
sunlight and the clear blue. In contemplating Him 
we shall ever be as men watching in the darkness 
of early dawn, with a deep sense of awe and mystery 
pressing upon us ; still there must be some glow upon 
the hill-tops and a flush in the upper air. There 
must, indeed, be a solemn silence that reverence 



78 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

may bow low and worship ; but there must also be 
a voice which we can trust, bidding us be not afraid. 
The absence of either of these elements would lead, 
I believe, to the decay of all true religion. In the 
God who commands our reverence and our loving 
worship, there must be mystery, and there must be 
manifestation. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 79 



CHAPTER III. 

LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE. 

' I "^HE " Laws of the Knowable" constitute Part II 
■*■ of Mr. Spencer's First Principles. Part I has 
already been examined, and its principles have been 
found to be self-destructive. We have now to in- 
quire whether Part II is any more worthy of the high 
reputation it has acquired. 

Part II has a very ambitious aim. It is, in brief, 
an attempt to rewrite the book of Genesis on the 
a priori plan, and from a scientific stand-point. Hav- 
ing in Part I safely landed all absolute knowledge, 
including the knowledge of God, in the realm of the 
unknowable, Mr. Spencer next proceeds to show, by 
reasoning on our ideas of matter and force, and by 
generalizations from known scientific laws, how the 
universe, including both life and mind, has necessa- 
rily evolved itself from the primitive star-dust, and 
that, too, without any guiding intelligence. Assum- 
ing the existence of a diffused nebulous matter, and 
admitting the validity of our ideas of matter and 
force, the cosmos must have become what it is. Mr. 
Spencer not only attempts to support this proposi- 
tion, but also to exhibit the method by which the 
primal cloud-bank, without any directing mind, has 



80 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

spun and woven itself into a universe which seems a 
miracle of design. The scheme is certainly a bold 
one, and demands unbounded confidence in logical 
architecture. When Mr. Darwin presents his limited 
doctrine of the origin of species, we feel that there is 
an enormous disproportion between the vast conclu- 
sion and the scanty evidence ; but when the problem 
is to give an a priori recipe for the universe, this 
feeling is greatly increased. Nothing but a very 
secure set of first principles can justify such a pro- 
cedure. If these have the slightest parallax with the 
truth, the conclusions based upon them will be utterly 
untrustworthy at the distances to which he extends 
them. But let us judge nothing beforehand. 

Mr. Spencer evidently feels relieved at escaping 
from the darkness of the unknowable into the day- 
light of the knowable. His subterranean gropings 
fettered his free movement, and it is with a sigh of 
relief that he emerges again into the upper air. The 
" pseud-ideas " are all safely locked up below, and a 
permanent injunction has been placed upon religion. 
No more trouble is to be expected from that quarter, 
and science has the field to itself at last. But no 
sooner does Mr. Spencer begin his scientific discus- 
sion, than it clearly appears that he has not left all 
the "pseud-ideas" in the dungeons below, but has 
smuggled a few of them over the borders of the 
knowable for his own private use. Or, possibly, he 
believes with Emerson, that " a foolish consistency is 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 81 

the bugbear of weak minds." At all events, in writ- 
ing Part II he is at no pains to remember the philo- 
sophical principles established in Part I. In Part I 
we learn that a self-existent creator is an untenable 
explanation of the universe, because self-existence is 
rigorously inconceivable. And why inconceivable ? 
Because "self-existence necessarily means existence 
without a beginning ; and to form a conception of 
self-existence is to form a conception of existence 
without a beginning. Now, by no mental effort 
can we do this. To conceive existence through 
infinite past time implies the conception of infinite 
past time, which is an impossibility." — P. 31. The 
impossibility here affirmed is one insisted upon by 
Hamilton, and, before him, by Hobbes ; but I must 
confess that, upon a most diligent examination of our 
conceptions, I am unable to detect the alleged diffi- 
culty. The force of the argument lies altogether in 
the false assumption that nothing is entitled to the 
rank of knowledge, which will not come before the 
representative faculty. But, not to insist upon this, 
see how Mr. Spencer answers himself. Infinite time 
is an impossible conception, and any idea or doc- 
trine which implies it, must be regarded as something 
" pseud." Yet as soon as God and religion are com- 
mitted to prison on the strength of this warrant, he 
tells us with undoubting assurance that matter is un- 
originated. But if so, then matter must have existed 
through infinite past time. The conception, then, of 



82 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

unoriginated matter implies the conception of infinite 
past time. "Now, by no mental effort can we do 
this. To conceive existence through infinite past time 
implies the conception of infinite past time, which is 
impossible." — P. 31. I yield to the cogency of the 
reasoning, and admit the eternity of matter to be an 
untenable hypothesis, a "pseud-idea." Mr. Spencer 
is equally sure that matter and force are indestruct- 
ible, both "persist." These are first principles, and 
much space is devoted to their exposition. But if 
matter and force are indestructible, they must exist 
through infinite future time ; and the conception of 
their indestructibility really involves the conception 
of infinite future time. " Now by no mental effort can 
we do this," etc. So then Mr. Spencer's leading doc- 
trines concerning matter and force are condemned by 
his own metaphysics as untenable hypotheses, involv- 
ing " symbolic conclusions of the illegitimate order." 
As a kind of bar to this criticism, he says : " What- 
ever may be true of matter absolutely, we have learned 
that relatively to our own consciousness, matter never 
comes into existence nor ceases to exist." — P. 239. 
This, however, in no wise assists him, for in his plea 
against idealism he assures us that, though we do 
not know the absolute reality, the relative reality 
which we do know stands in fixed connection with 
it. "Thus, then, we may resume with entire confi- 
dence the realistic conceptions which philosophy at 
first sight seems to dissipate. Though reality under 



Review of Herbert Spencer. S3 

the forms of our consciousness is but a conditioned 
effect of the absolute reality, yet this conditioned 
effect, standing in indissoluble relation with its un- 
conditioned cause, and equally persistent with it so 
long as the conditions persist, is, to the conscious- 
ness supplying those conditions, equally real. The 
persistent impressions being the persistent results 
of a persistent cause are, for practical purposes, the 
same as the cause itself, and may be habitually dealt 
with as its equivalent." — P. 229. As, then, the con- 
nection is indissoluble, while the relative reality per- 
sists the absolute reality must persist also ; and as 
the relative reality, matter, never begins nor ceases 
to exist, it follows that the absolute reality never be- 
gins nor ceases to exist. Now a Divine existence is 
incredible, because it involves the conception of in- 
finite time ; this is the very reason alleged for con- 
demning the belief in a self-existent creator as an 
untenable hypothesis. Yet here are doctrines which, 
though involving the same impossible idea, are dealt 
with as first truths. It is impossible to overestimate 
the convenience of a double-faced logic like this. I 
submit that Mr. Spencer must either recall his sen- 
tence of banishment against the Deity, or else. con- 
sign his own most fundamental doctrines to the limbo 
of " pseud-ideas." 

Mr. Spencer is not only a scientist, he is also a 
metaphysician. As a consequence, he is fond of 
representing laws which have been discovered only 



S4 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

by long and patient induction, as discoverable by a 
priori cogitation. Thus the indestructibility of mat- 
ter, the continuity of motion, and the persistence of 
force, are declared to be a priori truths of the highest 
certainty. It is a fashion with him to close a chapter 
by pointing out that the contained doctrine is really 
an a priori truth ; or, at least, a necessary corollary of 
some a priori principle. This is, indeed, a necessity 
of his system. No possible amount of experiment 
and induction would avail to prove these doctrines 
for all time and space ; and unless they can get some 
a priori support, they must present a sorry figure in 
so great a field. Indeed, these doctrines, as Mr. 
Spencer points out, are incapable of inductive proof. 
Matter can be proved indestructible only by assum- 
ing the persistence of force, and force can be proved 
persistent only by assuming matter to be indestruc- 
tible. The argument is circular, and hence, worthless ; 
one or the other of these doctrines must be based upon 
a priori considerations. Throughout this philosophy, 
fact is necessarily subordinate to theory. Out of a 
universe of phenomena only a few can be placed in the 
witness-box, and who knows but that only the most 
pliable have been subpoenaed ? The panel is very 
large, and possibly the jury may be packed. Unless 
the metaphysical principles are very secure, such a 
suspicion will necessarily attach to a verdict based 
upon such scanty evidence. The facts adduced serve 
to give a scientific appearance to the work, but their 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 85 

argumentative value is extremely small. It is to the 
underlying metaphysics that the doctrines must look 
for support. Yet I cannot but think Mr. Spencer 
singularly unsuccessful in his attempt to unite fact 
and philosophy. He does not seem, indeed, to have 
any just appreciation of the fact that contradictions 
cannot comfortably co-exist. In one place he tells 
us that a necessity of thought is no sign of a neces- 
sity of fact ; and then he offers a necessity of thought 
as the best possible proof of an external fact. Ex- 
amine the following statements : 

" Our inability to conceive matter becoming non- 
existent is immediately consequent upon the nature 
of thought itself. Thought consists in the establish- 
ment of relations. There can be no relation, and, 
therefore, no thought framed, when one of the terms 
is absent from consciousness. Hence it is impossible 
to think of something becoming nothing, for the same 
reason that it is impossible to think of nothing be- 
coming something — the reason, namely, that nothing 
cannot become an object of consciousness. The an- 
nihilation of matter is unthinkable for the very same 
reason that its creation is unthinkable ; and its inde- 
structibility thus becomes an a priori cognition of 
the highest order." — P. 241. To the objection, that 
most men do believe that matter is destructible, he 
replies that most men do not really think, but only 
think that they think. "And if this obliges us to 
reject a large part of human thinking as not thinking 



86 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

at all, but merely pseudo-thinking, there is no help for 
it." — P. 243. An explanation bordering on the heroic. 

This reasoning, which is repeated in proof of the 
persistence of force, amounts to this : what we cannot' 
conceive is impossible. We cannot conceive either 
creation or annihilation, hence they are impossible. 

Let us ask Mr. Spencer to answer himself again. 
Turning to the chapter on " Ultimate Scientific 
Ideas " — a miscellaneous collection of metaphysical 
puzzles — we learn that inconceivability is no test at 
all of truth. That matter is infinitely divisible, we 
are told, is an impossible conception. That it is 
not infinitely divisible, is declared equally irrational. 
Now, as it must be one or the other, it follows that the 
inconceivable is not the impossible. 

Again, the supposition that matter is absolutely 
solid is shown to be inconceivable. The converse 
is equally inconceivable. But as one of the supposi- 
tions must be true, it again appears that inconceiv- 
ability is no test of truth. 

Reasoning upon consciousness he says : " Hence, 
while we are unable either to believe or to conceive 
that the duration of consciousness is infinite, we are 
equally unable either to believe or to conceive that 
the duration of consciousness is finite ; we are equally 
unable either to know it as finite, or to conceive it as 
infinite." — P. 63. Here is another proof that incon- 
ceivability is no test of the possible ; for one of these 
suppositions must be true. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 87 

Yet more, not only is the inconceivable shown to 
be the possible, it is even the observable and the de- 
monstrable. The transfer of motion, and the pas- 
sage from motion to rest or from rest to motion, are 
mentioned as inconceivabilities of the first magnitude ; 
but they are nevertheless facts of hourly observation. 
The sphericity of the earth is another supreme incon- 
ceivability, and also an undoubted fact. That cen- 
tral forces should vary as the inverse square of the 
distance, is declared to be an inconceivability which 
passes all understanding ; it is also a fact of un- 
doubted demonstration. Dozens of illustrations 
might be culled from this chapter, all showing the 
worthlessness of inconceivability as a test of truth. 
Now who would expect to find the author of this 
chapter basing his belief in any thing upon the in- 
conceivability of the opposite ? Yet no sooner does 
Mr. Spencer get clear of the unknowable, than he 
finds it the best of proofs. The creation and de- 
struction of matter and force are impossible because 
inconceivable. And this he offers as argument, after 
giving us page upon page of proof that inconceiv- 
ability is no test at all of reality. Evidently Mr. 
Spencer, in his hurried flight from the unknowable, 
left either his memory or his logic behind him — or 
both. 

As a rendering of the mental test, I cannot but 
think the inconceivability, which Mr. Spencer charges 
upon the belief in the creation and destruction of mat- 



8S Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ter, to be one of the many psychologic forgeries which 
he has substituted for the true reading. Inconceiv- 
ability is an ambiguous term. Some statements 
violate the law of our reason, others transcend our 
reason. To the first class belong all contradictions, 
such as that a thing can be and not be at the same 
time. Here, too, belong denials of the law of causa- 
tion. To the second class belong inquiries about the 
inner nature of things, such as the questions : How 
does matter attract ? what constitutes existence ? The 
first class only are strictly inconceivable. Violating, 
as they do, the fundamental intuitions of the mind, 
as long as we have any faith at all in reason, we must 
believe these inconceivables to be impossibles. The 
second class is merely incomprehensible. How mat- 
ter is constituted, how motion is transmitted, how 
force is exercised : these are not inconceivable, but 
incomprehensible. We have not the data, if we have 
the faculties, for such inquiries as these. A denial 
based upon an inconceivable of the first class is 
founded upon mental power ; one based upon an in- 
conceivability of the second class is founded upon 
mental weakness. Because of what the mind is, we 
declare all that denies our mental intuitions to be in- 
conceivable. Because of what it is not, we declare 
all that transcends our intuitions to be inconceivable ; 
but the first inconceivable represents an impossible, 
the second represents an incomprehensible. 

Now if we examine the alleged inconceivability of 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 89 

the creation and destruction of matter, we shall see 
that it is really an incomprehensibility and nothing 
more. It does not violate, it transcends the laws of 
our thought. For who has such knowledge of the in- 
most nature of matter, that he can positively deny that 
things seen were made from things not appearing. 
Who can prove that matter is not the result of a spirit- 
ual activity in space, which will disappear when the 
activity ceases ? Who has so possessed himself of 
the central secret of material existence as to be sure 
that the world abides forever? We call the hills 
everlasting, and speak of the eternal stars ; yet who 
can bring any proof whatever that Shakspeare was 
not right when he wrote : 

" The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wreck behind ? " 

On the subject of causation, the mind has a very 
positive deliverance, but it has none whatever on this 
question ; it is simply transcendental to our faculties. 
All we can say is, we cannot comprehend how crea- 
tion or destruction is possible, but that they may be 
possible no one can deny. Yet Mr. Spencer uses 
this mental impotence as a sufficient test of objective 
reality. We cannot explain how a thing can be ; 
hence, it cannot be. Part I loads our faculties with 
opprobrium ; Part II constitutes them the measure, 
not merely of knowledge, but of existence. Part I 



90 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

declares inconceivability worthless as a test of real- 
ity ; Part II makes it the best of proofs. 

But, leaving these contradictions to destroy each 
other, let us pass to the central point of this system, 
and indeed the central point of all, that styles itself 
the " New Philosophy " — the correlation of forces. 

This doctrine necessarily holds the first place in 
every scheme of evolution ; for if it cannot be main- 
tained, there must be irreducible breaks in the rea- 
soning. If the physical forces refuse to correlate 
with the vital, there would be no possibility of passing 
from the tossing whirlpool of flame, or the waste 
theater of rock and mud, which once constituted our 
earth, to organic existence. There would be an ab- 
solute necessity for some external power to introduce 
the new creation, or the inorganic would remain in- 
organic forever. In the same way, if the physical 
forces do not correlate with the mental, the evolu- 
tionist could not pass, by a continuous chain of cause 
and effect, from the ancient nebula to mind and its 
manifestations. But if, on the other hand, there 
should be such correlation, there would be a possi- 
bility of finding the present order potentially existent 
in the primeval mist. The possibility might be very 
slight indeed, but it would be sufficient to base an 
argument upon. When the earth cooled down to a 
temperature compatible with the existence of organ- 
ization, the physical forces, in their restless and eternal 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 9r 

hide-and-seek, might chance upon organic combina- 
tions, and thus life, and finally mind, would be started 
upon their way ; and when a beginning was once made, 
natural selection and time could be offered in expla- 
nation of all improvement. It is, then, of first impor- 
tance to a philosophy which aims to educe life, mind, 
poetry, science, Milton, Plato, Newton, Raphael, every 
body and every thing, from a condensing mist, to make 
out this correlation. Let us see how the work is done. 
In Mr. Spencer's proof of the correlation of the 
physical forces, the same ridiculous confusion of 
force and motion is apparent, which is so patent in 
all our works on this subject. Heat is a mode of 
motion and a mode of force, at the same time. 
Motion produces magnetism, magnetism is motion, 
magnetism is force, motion is force. The same is 
said of light and electricity : both are motions and 
both are forces. Yet the universal definition of force 
describes it as the hidden cause of motion or change. 
When pressed for a definition, there is no scientist 
who would view them in any other relation. To use 
cause and effect as interchangeable and identical, 
involves a most remarkable confusion of ideas. Yet 
Mr. Spencer is not alone in this error. I do not 
know a single scientist who has maintained the 
proper distinction between force and motion. It 
would be easy to fill pages with quotations from the 
writings of the most prominent scientists, all illus- 
trating the same confusion. In truth, the majority 



92 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

of scientific men do not understand the doctrine of 
correlation. Heat, light, electricity, etc., are not 
forces, but modes of motion, any one of which can 
produce all the rest. This passage of one mode of 
motion into another mode, is its correlation ; but this 
correlation is a correlation of motions, and not of 
forces. Whether the hidden force or forces which 
manifest themselves in these several modes be one or 
more, is a question which no experiment can decide. 
To prove a true correlation of forces, it must be shown 
that the powers which maintain the chemical mole- 
cule and those which bind the members of the solar 
system together, are identical. The identity of cohe- 
sion, chemical affinity, and the force of gravitation, 
must be established — a thing which no one has done. 

For the sake of progress, however, let us admit 
the unity of the physical forces. Do these correlate 
with the vital forces ? What is the proof that vitality 
is a function of material forces ? Mr. Spencer argues 
as follows : 

" Plant life is all dependent, directly or indirectly, 
upon the heat and light of the sun — 'directly depend- 
ent in the immense majority of plants, and indirectly 
dependent in plants which, as the fungi, flourish in the 
dark ; since these, growing as they do at the expense 
of decaying organic matter, mediately draw their forces 
from the same original source. Each plant owes the 
carbon and hydrogen, of which it mainly consists,, to 
the carbonic acid and water in the surrounding air 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 93 

and earth. The carbonic acid and water must, how- 
ever, be decomposed before their carbon and hydrogen 
can be assimilated. To overcome the powerful affin- 
ities which hold their elements together requires the 
expenditure of force, and this force is supplied by 
the sun. In what manner the decomposition is ef- 
fected we do not know. But we know that when, 
under fit conditions, plants are exposed to the sun's 
rays, they give off oxygen and accumulate carbon and 
hydrogen. In darkness this process ceases. It 
ceases, too, when the quantities of light and heat re- 
ceived are greatly reduced, as in winter. Conversely 
it is active when the light and heat are great, as in 
summer. And the like relation is seen in the fact 
that, while plant-life is luxuriant in the tropics, it di- 
minishes in temperate regions, and disappears as we 
approach the poles. Thus the irresistible inference 
is that the forces by which plants abstract the ma- 
terial of their tissues from surrounding inorganic 
compounds — the forces by which they grow and 
carry on their functions — are forces that previously 
existed as solar radiations. 

" That animal life is immediately or mediately de- 
pendent on vegetal life is a familiar truth ; and that, 
in the main, the processes of animal life are opposite 
to those of vegetal life, is a truth long current among 
men of science. Chemically considered, vegetal life 
is chiefly a process of deoxidation, and animal life 
chiefly a process of oxidation — chiefly, we must say, 



94 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

because in so far as plants are expenders of force for 
the purposes of organization they are oxidizers ; and 
animals, in some of their minor processes, are prob- 
able deoxidizers. But, with this qualification, the 
general truth is that while the plant, decomposing car- 
bonic acid and water and liberating hydrogen, builds 
up the detained carbon and hydrogen (along with a 
little nitrogen and small quantities of other elements 
elsewhere obtained) into branches, leaves, and seeds, 
the animal consuming these branches, leaves, and 
seeds, and absorbing oxygen, recomposes carbonic 
acid and water, together with certain nitrogenous 
compounds in minor amounts. And while the decom- 
position effected by the plant is at the expense of 
certain forces emanating from the sun, which are 
employed in overcoming the affinities of carbon and 
hydrogen for the oxygen united with them, the re- 
composition effected by the animal is at the profit of 
these forces which are liberated during the combina- 
tion of such elements. Thus the movements, inter- 
nal and external, of the animal are re-appearances in 
new forms of a power absorbed by the plant under 
the shape of light and heat. Just as, in the manner 
above explained, the solar forces expended in raising 
vapor from the sea's surface are given out again in 
the fall of rain and rivers to the same level, and in the 
accompanying transfer of solid matters, so the solar 
forces, that in the plant raise certain chemical ele- 
ments to a condition of unstable equilibrium, are 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 95 

given out again in the actions of the animal during 
the fall of these elements to a condition of stable 
equilibrium." — Pp. 271-273. 

To this general proof he adds the following illus- 
tration : " The transformation of the unorganized 
contents of an egg into the organized chick is alto- 
gether a question of heat. Withhold heat, and the 
process does not commence ; supply heat, and it 
goes on while the temperature is maintained, but 
ceases when the egg is allowed to cool. The devel- 
opmental changes can be completed only by keeping 
the temperature with tolerable constancy at a defi- 
nite height for a definite time ; that is, only by sup- 
plying a definite amount of heat." — P. 273. 

The gist of Mr. Spencer's argument is this. 
Without sunshine there can be no plant or animal 
life, hence sunshine and life are one. Without heat 
the chicken cannot be hatched, therefore heat and 
vitality are identical. Now surely it requires a great 
deal of faith to accept this argument as conclusive. 
At the most, it only proves the possibility of their 
identity, but it by no means establishes the fact. 
All that is really made out is that heat and light 
are necessary conditions of vital action ; but surely 
the conditions of the action, and the power acting, 
need not be the same. Bricks and mortar are con- 
ditions of the builder's activity, but they are not the 
builder. The engine is a condition of steam's activ- 
ity, but the engine is rarely the steam. Now if the 



g6 Review of Herbej-t Spencer. 

believer in vitality should choose to say that there is 
a constructive or directive force in the body, which, 
while separate from the physical forces, does use 
those forces as its agents in construction and func- 
tion, what is there in Mr. Spencer's argument to 
disprove it ? There is not one word which makes 
against such a hypothesis ; yet he moves on ap- 
parently without a suspicion that any more proof is 
desirable, and tells us on the strength of this fallacy 
that " whoever duly weighs the evidence will see 
that nothing short of an overwhelming bias in favor 
of a preconceived theory can explain its non-ac- 
ceptance." But if this is all the proof that Mr. 
Spencer has to offer, it requires no very critical eye 
to see where the " overwhelming bias " is. Whoever 
has proved the correlation of the physical and vital 
forces, Mr. Spencer has not ; indeed, one who can 
thus confound the conditions of activity with the 
power acting, has not even understood the meaning 
of the problem, to say nothing of solving it. 

But has any one proved this correlation ? Is 
there, in any of the treatises on this subject, any 
thing which establishes the identity of the physical 
and vital forces ? There is no end of assertion and 
imagination ; but there is nothing which approaches 
a proof. Mr. Huxley tells us that protoplasm is the 
basis of life, and then says that life is the only 
known source of protoplasm ; that is, the " basis " 
requires a living base. But since there is no life 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 97 

without protoplasm, and no protoplasm without life, 
the question of priority becomes the parallel of the 
famous inquiry whether the hen produces the egg, 
or the egg the hen. If the question be left in this 
condition, it might be claimed with equal justice that 
life is the basis of protoplasm. It becomes neces- 
sary, then, to break the circle somewhere ; and, 
accordingly, he tells us that, if we could have been 
present when the earth manifested extraordinary 
conditions, we might have seen protoplasm produced 
from the inorganic. This, and the further declara- 
tion that there is no telling what chemistry may 
do yet, is all that Mr. Huxley has to offer. One 
" might-have-been " and one " may-be," are the sup- 
port of the great conclusion. Indeed, not even this 
much can be allowed him ; for, though the doctrine 
is that protoplasm lives by virtue of its chemical 
combination, he unluckily admits that protoplasm 
may die, and often is found dead. Now, dead-life is 
decidedly good ; but, if we are not prepared to 
believe in it, we must conclude that protoplasm is 
not life, but something into which life enters, and 
from which it may depart. Mr. Huxley's lecture in 
which he propounded this logical atrocity, taken 
along with the fright it gave some nervous people, 
constitutes a most brilliant example of the possibil- 
ities of "much ado about nothing." Pages of similar 
assertions might be gathered from the leading works 
on this subject, together with not a few contemptu- 



98 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ous expressions about the believers in vitality. The 
odium theologicum is a favorite charge against the 
theologians ; but it really seems as if there is an 
odium scientificum which is not one whit more hon- 
orable. Dr. Beale, one of the first microscopists of 
the day, in an essay on the " Mystery of Life/' com- 
plains as follows : " It is indeed significant, if, as 
seems to be the case at this time in England, an 
investigator cannot be allowed to remark that the 
facts, which he has demonstrated, and phenomena, 
which he has observed, render it impossible for him 
to assent at present to the dogma that life is a mode 
of ordinary force, without being held up by some 
who entertain opinions at variance with his own, as a 
person who desires to stop or retard investigation, who 
disbelieves in the correlation of the physical forces, 
and in the established truths of physical science." 

Disregarding now all fancies and prophecies, what 
is really proved in the premises ? What are the 
facts in the case ? 

A living organism manifests properties so differ- 
ent from those of inorganic matter, that, unless some 
plausible explanation can be found in the properties 
of the latter, we must assume some peculiar power, 
some distinct cause, to explain the variation. In the 
first place, organic compounds are all in a state of 
unstable equilibrium, which chemistry and mechanics 
are constantly seeking to overset. So long as life 
lasts, this equilibrium is maintained ; as soon as it 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 99 

ceases, the body is quickly reduced to more stable in- 
organic compounds. This looks as though life were 
not a function of chemical affinity and mechanical 
power, as the correlationists assert, but rather a 
force which is in direct opposition to them. Again, 
inorganic compounds have no identity apart from 
the atoms that compose them ; living beings main- 
tain their identity in the constant change of their 
composition. The body of to-day is not the body of 
last year, or even of yesterday, but it is the same living 
being. This looks as though there were a principle 
or power which abides in the organism, and renews 
its constant waste by an equally constant repair. 
Dead matter, too, grows only by accretion, and what 
is added to it gains no new properties ; living matter 
grows by selective assimilation. One kind of matter 
goes to the muscles, another to bones, another to 
brain and nerves ; and what is thus assimilated takes 
on new powers of which there was not the slightest 
hint before. This selective assimilation looks as 
though there were a selective power within. 

In the different forms of life, too, we have different 
plans of development. The carbon, oxygen, hydro- 
gen, and nitrogen which a fish assimilates, are built 
up into fish, and not into horse. This differentiation 
of identical elements into different forms of life, also 
looks as though there were something more than 
chemistry concerned in the matter. 

Another peculiarity is that a living being, if 



loo Review of Herbert Spencer. 

killed, cannot be made to live again ; dissolution 
is destruction. You may have the identical ele- 
ments, and can mix them as you will ; you can 
heat them, or use magnetism or electricity, as long 
as you please ; the thing is dead and will not live. 
In this respect it differs from the crystal, that stand- 
ing illustration of the unbelievers, which may be 
dissolved and reproduced at pleasure. But, not to 
mention other points of difference, the phenomena 
of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, where 
they appear in the organic world, differ entirely from 
their phenomena in the inorganic. Combine and 
treat them as we will, they give no hint of their 
organic powers. What is it, then, which bestows 
upon these elements their high prerogatives ? What 
is it which raises them to this upper plane ? Do 
they do it themselves ? or is there a mystic and sub- 
tle chemist in those little cells, who is the author of 
these inimitable wonders ? 

The standing answer of the correlationists is, that 
the peculiar chemical combination explains the facts. 
We may not be able to detect the molecular interac- 
tions ; but if we could, we should undoubtedly find a 
complete explanation of vitality in the properties of 
the chemical elements. These elements in certain 
combinations manifest chemical properties ; in oth- 
ers they manifest vital properties. This is the sum 
of their utterances on this subject. 

In the first place, if this theory were true the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 101 

difficulty would not be explained. Life comes only 
from life. There is no proof at all of any vital passage 
from the inorganic to the organic. To the conclusion 
derived from Tyndall's experiments upon floating dust 
and germs, the theory of spontaneous generation has 
not made any effective reply. So far as our present 
chemistry is concerned, the organic and inorganic are 
separated by an impassable gulf. Mightily as it has 
conjured, it knows no incantation which will evoke 
the living from the lifeless. Prophecy is not wanting, 
but fulfillment has thus far been of the Millerite order. 
If, then, the chemical combination explained the phe- 
nomena, the chemical combination would next have 
to be explained. Is the combination the source of 
life ? it is no less certain that life is the only known 
cause of the combination. The backdoor by which 
Mr. Huxley escaped from a similar dilemma about 
protoplasm is still open, however ; and the correla- 
tionist may escape the difficulty, by suggesting that 
under very extraordinary conditions, and in some 
time so far out of sight as to be beyond criticism, 
that which our highest wisdom cannot now accom- 
plish, that which it would be folly to think happens 
now, happened then of its own accord. 

So much for the explanation, even if it were true, 
that the chemical combination explains the facts. But 
is it true ? We are met by difficulties here again. 
If it be true, these identical combinations ought to 
result in the same forms of life. It is well- known, 



102 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

however, that the germ-cells of many of the higher 
and lower animals, and even of plants, are chemically 
identical. Yet each of those germs is potential of a 
specific type of life, and of no other. Now, if chemi- 
cal affinity is the only force at work here, how does 
it happen that these germs of similar composition 
develope into such diverse forms ? 

It is said that difference of conditions determines 
the difference of result, but the answer to this plea is 
obvious. On this supposition the source of impreg- 
nation is a matter of indifference. A mouse might 
become a man, and conversely ; in short, all males 
might interchange without affecting the result. Con- 
dition will, indeed, determine whether a given germ 
shall realize its type of development, but the type is 
impressed upon the germ itself. If the conditions of 
development are not met there is no result ; but where 
they are met, then the thing develops after its kind. 
That the microscope detects no trace of organization, 
is no argument against the fact — the microscope is not 
all-seeing. Professor Tyndall has pointed out that the 
most profound and complex changes take place almost 
infinitely below the microscope limit. We know, too, 
that a human germ may carry with it an evil tend- 
ency which, in thirty or forty years, shall send a man 
to the insane asylum. Now in the same way, only 
much more intimately, does the germ bear with it an 
organizing, constructive power which, when the fit 
conditions are supplied, will determine the future 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 103 

product. The doctrine of the chemical affinity of 
germs is just the reason why we cannot look upon 
life as a function of affinity, because it leaves the dif- 
ference of the product entirely unaccounted for. At 
this point the correlationist, instead of admitting that 
his doctrine is without support, generally suggests 
that though known chemical properties do not ex- 
plain the facts, there may be unknown properties 
which do — a mode of argument which would disprove 
every scientific doctrine. 

But what, then, is the function of the physical forces 
in the body ? We take food, which certainly does 
nourish the system and does produce power ; is not 
this a correlation ? Grant that the correlation is a 
logical impossibility, is it not, like many other logical 
impossibilities, an established fact ? To this the an- 
swer is, that the physical forces are the working 
forces of the system — they are expended in labor and 
in the performance of function — but the preceding 
considerations render it impossible to look upon them 
as the organizing, constructive, or directive force of 
the system. This organizing force employs the phys- 
ical forces as its servants, and cannot dispense with 
them ; but there is no proof of correlation. 

The only argument of any weight that can be urged 
against this has been offered by Mr. Maudsley,and that 
does not attack the justice of the reasoning, but rather 
seeks to evade it by a skillful flank movement. He 
says : " Admitting that vital transforming matter is 



104 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

at first derived from vital structure, it is evident that 
the external force and matter transformed does, in 
turn, become transforming force — that is, vital. And 
if that takes place after the vital process has once com- 
menced, is it, it may be asked, extravagant to suppose 
that a similar transformation might at some period 
have commenced the process, and may ever be doing 
so ? The fact that in growth and development life is 
continually increasing from a transformation of phys- 
ical and chemical forces is, after all, in favor of the 
presumption that it may at first have so originated. 
And the advocate of this view may turn upon his op- 
ponent and demand of him how he, with a due regard 
to the axiom that force is not self-generatory, and to 
the fact that living matter does increase from the 
size of a little cell to the magnitude of a human body, 
accounts for the continual production of transforming 
power? A definite quantity only could have been 
derived from the mother structure, and that must 
have been exhausted at an early period of growth. 
The obvious refuge of the vitalist is to the facts that 
it is impossible now to evolve life artificially out of 
any combination of physical and chemical forces, and 
that such a transformation is never witnessed save 
under the conditions of vitality." * 

This is the best thing the correlationists have said 
yet, and it is the best that can be said. The only 
thing more satisfactory will be the production of life 

* Body and Mind, p. 169. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 105 

from the inorganic — a thing which Mr. Maudsley 
prophesies with somewhat of confidence. Dr. Car- 
penter's famous reductio ad absurdum against the 
vitalists is similar to this argument, but, having the 
logical merit of self-contradiction, it need not be con- 
sidered. Now, the sum of Mr. Maudsley's argument 
is this — vital force is increasing. But either it must 
be self-generating or it must be transformed physical 
force. The former supposition is absurd, hence the 
latter is true. This is his argument ; his soothsay- 
ings are beside the question. 

It is not quite certain, however, that the first suppo- 
sition is as absurd as the exigencies of the argument 
demand. Scientific men teach that an atom of matter 
can propagate its attractive influence along an in- 
finite number of radii and to an infinite distance, and 
do it forever — this is the doctrine of gravitation. 
Moreover the atoms of a molecule hold each other in 
a grasp which giants could not wrench asunder, and 
exert this tremendous pull forever — this is the doc- 
trine of chemical affinity. Now one might turn upon 
the advocate of these doctrines and "demand how 
he, with due regard to the axiom that force is not 
self-generating," can hold such views ? But if these 
views are not incredible, why may not the original 
spark of vitality have indefinitely extended itself? 
But granting the supposition to be as absurd as Mr. 
Maudsley thinks it, his alternatives do not exhaust 
the possibilities of the case. Vitality might be self- 



io6 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

generating, it might be transformed physical force, 
or it might have a source unrecognized at present. 
Let us grant the absurdity of the first supposition, 
the previous considerations show the difficulty of ad- 
mitting the second ; there is, then, no alternative 
but to ascribe it to an unknown source. Indeed, why 
not ? There may well be " more things in heaven 
and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy." 

So much for the correlation of the physical and 
vital forces. Our interest in the doctrine is chiefly 
logical ; true or false, religion would be able to live 
and philosophy to catch its breath. But whatever 
the future may establish, at present this boasted cor- 
relation has not a shadow of support, but is in irrecon- 
cilable opposition to known facts. It is based, in 
many cases, upon that desire for unity and simplicity 
in science which is at once so attractive and so mis- 
leading ; in many more, it is based upon a desire to 
be irreligious ; and in all, upon monstrously bad logic. 

But let us get back to Mr. Spencer. His argu- 
ment for the identity of physical and vital force, we 
saw to be triumphantly worthless ; now, let us see 
whether he succeeds any better in proving the iden- 
tity of the physical and mental forces. It is not at 
all probable, after the specimens we have already had 
of Mr. Spencer's reasoning, that we shall meet with 
any valuable results ; still let us possess our souls in 
patience. The proofs adduced are as follows : 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 107 

" All impressions from moment to' moment made 
on our organs of sense stand in direct correlation 
with physical forces existing externally. The modes 
of consciousness called pressure, motion, sound, light, 
heat, are effects produced in us by agencies which, as 
otherwise expended, crush or fracture pieces of mat- 
ter, generate vibrations in surrounding objects, cause 
chemical combinations, and reduce substances from a 
solid to a liquid form. Hence, if we regard the 
changes of relative position, of aggregation, or of 
chemical state thus arising, as being transformed 
manifestations of the agencies from which they arise, 
so must we regard the sensations which such agencies 
produce in us as new forms of the forces producing 
them." . . . 

" Besides the correlation and equivalence between 
external physical forces and the mental forces gener- 
ated by them in us under the form of sensations, 
there is a correlation and equivalence between sensa- 
tions and those physical forces which, in the shape 
of bodily actions, result from them. The feelings we 
distinguish as light, heat, sound, odor, taste, pressure, 
etc., do not die away without immediate results, but 
are invariably followed by other manifestations of 
force. In addition to the excitements of secreting 
organs that are in some cases traceable, there arises 
a contraction of the involuntary muscles or of the 
voluntary muscles, or of both. Sensations increase 
the action of the heart — slightly when they are slight, 



io8 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

markedly when they are marked — and recent physio- 
logical inquiries imply not only that contraction of 
the heart is excited by every sensation, but also that 
the muscular fibers throughout the whole vascular 
system are at the same time more or less con- 
tracted." . . . 

" If we take emotions instead of sensations, we 
find the correlation and equivalence equally manifest. 
Not only are the modes of consciousness directly 
produced in us by physical forces re-transformable 
into physical forces under the form of muscular mo- 
tions, and the changes they initiate, but the like is 
true of those modes of consciousness which are not 
directly produced in us by the physical forces. Emo- 
tions of moderate intensity, like sensations of moder- 
ate intensity, generate little beyond excitement of 
the heart and vascular system, joined sometimes with 
increased action of glandular organs. But, as the 
emotions rise in strength, the muscles of the face, 
body, and limbs begin to move. Of examples may 
be mentioned the frowns, dilated nostrils, and stamp- 
ings of anger ; the contracted brows and wrung hands 
of grief ; the smiles and leaps of joy, and the frantic 
struggles of terror and despair. Passing over certain 
apparent, but only apparent, exceptions, we see that- 
whatever be the kind of emotion, there is a manifest 
relation between its amount and the amount of mus- 
cular action induced." — Pp. 275-277, 

This, with the further considerations that physical 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 109 

stimuli, as whisky or opium, increase mental action, 
while unconsciousness follows inaction of the brain, 
is the substance of the proof that the physical and 
mental forces are one. Disengaged from swelling 
statement it reads thus : Physical forces, such as 
light or heat, excite sensations ; therefore sensations 
are transformed light and heat. 

Sensations, being pleasant or painful, are followed 
by motion either toward or from the object of sensa- 
tion. Hence mechanical motion and its equivalents 
are the correlates of sensation. 

Again, mental action is attended by certain physi- 
cal conditions ; hence they are one. 

Indeed, the whole argument may be summed up 
in this : Physical states excite mental states ; hence 
each is a form of the other. 

Now, looking at this merely with a logician's eye it 
must be confessed that it falls far short of proof. It 
establishes relation, not identity. One thing may 
well be the occasion of another without being that 
other. No one can deny that light and heat may 
be the physical antecedents of sensation without 
being transformed sensations. Surely to prove a re- 
lation is not to prove a correlation. To the claim of 
quantitative relation between mental action and brain 
waste there is this reply : The soul communicates 
with the physical world through a material organism, 
and its interests are bound up with it. Mental action 
is accompanied by nervous action, and this being 



I io Review of Herbert Spencer. 

so, we should expect such quantitative relation even 
if there were no real interchange of power. Besides, 
there are many things which seem to indicate that 
even this relation is not as constant as the theory- 
demands ; that the soul can by its own energy main- 
tain and restore physical vigor. It often happened 
during our late war that a stirring national air or 
some familiar home-tune inspired a body of dispirited 
and worn-out men with new life and vigor. Every 
student has known what it is to feel the jar and dis- 
cord of a nerve cease, and weakness pass into power, 
as, in some moment of desponding gloom, a great 
thought has kindled within ; under its inspiration 
he has achieved the impossible, and without any corre- 
sponding depression. Whence the new power ? Ordi- 
narily the connection between mental action and 
nervous waste is maintained, but it does not seem to 
be always so. Yet if it were, the correlation is not 
made out. The experiments made by Professor Bark- 
er and others, which are said to establish the iden- 
tity of heat and mental force, really prove only a 
correlation between heat and the nervous action 
which attends thinking. Nervous action and heat 
correlate, but the real point is to prove that nervous 
action and mental force correlate. This has never 
been done. The whole argument consists in ringing 
the changes upon the fact, known and undoubted 
from the beginning, that mental and physical states 
affect each other — which is far enough from proving 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 1 1 1 

an identity. Yet, not only is this all that Mr. Spencer 
has to offer, it is all that any one has to offer ; and 
the conclusion based upon this scanty evidence is 
dressed up in a pseudo-science, and trumpeted abroad 
as having all the certitude of scientific demonstration. 
To ask for more proof is sure proof of " an over- 
whelming bias in favor of a preconceived theory." 

Bad as the argument is logically, psychologically it 
is a great deal worse. But as I wish to reserve this 
discussion for the next chapter, I will merely indicate 
the psychological shortcomings of the theory and 
pass on. In the first place, the doctrine does not 
explain why even sensation is impossible without an 
inner activity of the soul. In the next place, it gives 
no account of the great majority of our mental states 
which have no physical antecedent. It also denies 
the possibility of self-determination, which is one of 
the most assured facts of consciousness ; and finally, 
it contradicts the emphatic distinction which the soul 
makes, between itself and the organism which it 
inhabits. 

But psychology has yet another word to offer to the 
" New Philosophy." It demands the authority for the 
belief in force at all. It summons the evolutionist to 
tell where he discovered this force with which he con- 
jures so mightily. And just here every system of 
mechanical atheism is speechless. For it is admitted 
now by all that force is not a phenomenon, but a mental 
datum. Hume did philosophy a good service in show- 



H2 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ing that nature presents nothing but sequence, and 
this is rigidly true. The keenest eye, looking upon the 
armies of phenomena which maneuver in the physical 
world, could detect nothing but succession. Regi- 
ment after regiment might march by us in time-order, 
but they could give us no hint of power. This idea is 
home-born, and born only of our conscious effort. It 
is only as agents that we believe in action ; it is only 
as there is causation within, that we get any hint of 
causation without. Not gravitation, nor electricity, 
nor magnetism, nor chemical affinity, but will, is the 
typical idea of force. Self-determination, volition, is 
the essence of the only causation we know ; will is 
the sum-total of the dynamic idea ; it either stands 
for that or nothing. Now science professes itself 
unable to interpret nature without this metaphysical 
idea of power. Some of the more rigorous Baco- 
nians, as Comte and Mill, have attempted to exclude 
the conception from science as without warrant ; but 
the ridiculous contradictions into which they fell, only 
served to make more clear its absolute necessity. 

Science refers all change to one universal force ; 
what is that force ? It is either the activity of 
a person, the determination of a will, or nothing. If 
external causation is to be affirmed on the warrant 
of internal causation, the external must be after the 
pattern of the internal ; the existence of one thing is 
no reason for affirming the existence of another to- 
tally unlike it. The mental law which warrants the 



Revieiv of Herbert Spencer. 113 

belief in external power, warrants the interpretation 
of that power into the divine activity. If science 
like not this alternative, then it has no warrant for 
belief in force at all. It must content itself with a 
lifeless registration of co-existences and sequences 
which have no dynamic connection. Every form of 
science which assumes the reality of causation must 
disappear ; and Positivism, a thousand-fold more rigid 
than M. Comte ever dreamed of, will be all that is 
left us. The uncultured mind in all ages has persisted 
in referring external phenomena to external wills. 
Was there a storm, Neptune was angry, or Eolus had 
let slip the winds. Was there a pestilence, some 
malignant demon had discovered the fountain of life, 
and charged it with deadly poison. Every order of 
fact had its god, to whose agency it was referred. 
The winds were ministers, and the brooks had their 
errand. In that early time men saw a divine smile 
in the sunshine and the harvest, and detected tokens 
of wrath in the flying storm. The quiet lake, which 
reflected from its surface the encircling woods and 
hills, was the abode of a divine peace ; and each dark 
and fearful cave was the dwelling-place of a fury. In 
short, nature was alive, and men gazed upon it and 
saw there their own image. Absurd as were many 
of the beliefs begot of this tendency, it was far truer 
to psychology than is the prevailing scientific con- 
ception of an impersonal force. Nature is the abode 
and manifestation of a free mind like our own. We 



114 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

prune and criticise that ancient belief, and return to 
find it, not false, but needing only a transfigured in- 
terpretation. As for the scientific conception of an 
impersonal force, it has no warrant within, nor the 
shadow of support without. Will-power, or none, is 
the alternative offered by inexorable logic. Besides, 
the doctrine of an impersonal force in matter seems 
really opposed to the law of inertia. The law assumes 
absolute deadness in matter ; the doctrine attributes 
to it all kinds of activity. One doctrine is that mat- 
ter cannot change its state ; the other is that matter 
can change its state. It is for the scientists to de- 
termine which they will give up. If they retain in- 
ertia, they must give up the force ; and if they retain 
the force, they bring matter within the realm of the 
self-determining. 

M. Comte in a very remarkable passage admits 
the justice of this reasoning. He says : 

" If we insist upon penetrating the insoluble mys- 
tery of the essential cause of phe^mena, there is no 
hypothesis more satisfactory than that they proceed 
from wills, dwelling in them or outside of them ; an 
hypothesis which assimilates them to the effects pro- 
duced by the desires which exist within ourselves. 
Were it not for the pride induced by metaphysical 
and scientific studies, it would be inconceivable that 
any atheist, ancient or modern, should have believed 
that his vague hypotheses on such a subject were 
preferable to this direct mode of explanation. And 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 1 1 5 

it was the only mode which really satisfied the 
reason until men began to see the utter inanity and 
inutility of all absolute research. The order of na- 
ture is doubtless very imperfect in every respect; 
but its production is far more compatible with the 
hypothesis of an intelligent will, than with that of a 
blind mechanism. Persistent atheists, then, would 
seem to be the most illogical of theologians ; for they 
occupy themselves with the same questions, yet reject 
the only appropriate method of handling them." * 

That is, it is nonsense to ask for the cause of the 
present order ; but if you are not yet ripe enough to 
see the folly of such inquiries, then the only rational 
answer is that the order of nature is the work of a 
superintending Mind. M. Comte was not, in strict- 
ness, an atheist ; he was more, he was a positivist. 

Mr. Spencer, too, admits the cogency of the rea- 
soning which reduces external force to a personal 
activity, but escapes the conclusion by the following 
logical sleight-of-hand : 

" On lifting a chair, the force exerted we regard 
as equal to that antagonistic force called the weight 
of the chair ; and we cannot think of these as equal 
without thinking of them as like in kind, since 
equality is conceivable only between things that are 
connatural. The axiom that action and reaction are 
equal, and in opposite directions, commonly exem- 
plified by this very instance of muscular force versus 

* L'Ensemble du Positivisme, p. 46. 



1 1 6 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

weight, cannot be mentally realized on any other 
condition. Yet, contrariwise, it is incredible that 
the force as existing in the chair really resembles 
the force as present to our minds. It scarcely needs 
to point out that the weight of the chair produces in 
us various feelings according as we support it by a 
single finger, or the whole hand, or the leg ; and 
hence to argue, that as it cannot be like all these 
sensations, there is no reason to believe it like any. 
It suffices to remark that since the force as known 
to us is an affection of consciousness, we cannot con- 
ceive the force existing in the chair under the same 
form without endowing the chair with consciousness. 
So that it is absurd to think of force as like our 
sensation of it, and yet necessary so to think of it, 
if we realize it in consciousness at all." — P. 58. 

Mr. Spencer here admits that if we think of ex- 
ternal force at all it must be viewed as a personal 
power like our own ; but as this would land us in 
absurdities, we must not conceive it under such a 
form. However, the force of his argument against 
the conception lies entirely in the assumption that 
force is identical with muscular tension and sensa- 
tion. There is no absurdity in supposing that the 
great, coordinating force of matter, whereby not only 
this chair and the earth, but all things, are bound 
together, is a manifestation of a Divine will ; and in 
such case, whenever our wills measure themselves 
against it, there would really be a common measure. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 117 

There is no need to endow the chair with conscious- 
ness or the power of sensation, but only to conceive 
this universal coordinating power as rooted in a per- 
sonality in some respects like our own. As for the ten- 
sion that we feel, it is not force, but the effect of force. 
Sensation is not power, but result. Our knowledge 
of power is based upon our self-determination, and not 
upon our muscular feelings ; all of which might be 
removed without in any way affecting our knowledge 
of force. There is, to be sure, an absurdity in the 
paragraph, but it is the absurdity of identifying cause 
and effect, and belongs entirely to Mr. Spencer. 

In a recent essay upon Mr. Martineau, Mr. Spen- 
cer makes some further criticisms upon this doctrine, 
that mind is first and rules forever. He orders up 
the following re-enforcements : 

" If, then, I have to conceive evolution as caused 
by an ' originating Mind,' I must conceive this mind 
as having attributes akin to those of the only mind 
I know, and without which I cannot conceive mind 
at all. I will not dwell on the many incongruities 
hence resulting by asking how the ' originating Mind' 
is to be thought of as having states produced by 
things objective to it; as discriminating among these 
states and classing them as like and unlike, and as 
preferring one objective result to another. I will 
simply ask, What happens if we ascribe to the ' orig- 
inating Mind' the character absolutely essential to 
the conception of mind, that it consists of a series 



1 1 8 Revieiv of Herbert Spencer. 

of states of consciousness ? Put a series of states 
of consciousness as cause and the evolving universe 
as effect, and then endeavor to see the last as flow- 
ing from the first. It is possible to imagine in some 
dim kind of way a series of states of consciousness 
serving as antecedent to any one of the movements 
I see going on, for my own states of consciousness 
are often indirectly the antecedents to such move- 
ments. But how if I attempt to think of such a 
series as antecedent to all actions throughout the 
universe, to the motions of the multitudinous stars 
through space, to the revolutions of all their planets 
around them, to the gyration of all these planets on 
their axes, to the infinitely multiplied physical proc- 
esses going on in each of these suns and planets ? 
I cannot even think of a series of states of conscious- 
ness as causing the relatively-small group of actions 
going on over the earth's surface ; I cannot even 
think of it as antecedent to all the winds and dis- 
solving clouds they bear, to the currents of all the 
rivers and the grinding action of all the glaciers ; still 
less can I think of it as antecedent to the infinity of 
processes simultaneously going on in all the plants 
that cover the globe, from tropical palms down to 
polar lichens, and in all the animals that roam among 
them, and the insects that buzz about them. Even 
to a single small set of these multitudinous terrestrial 
changes, I cannot conceive as antecedent a series of 
states of consciousness — cannot, for instance, think 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 119 

of it as causing the hundred thousand breakers that 
are at this instant curling over the shores of En- 
gland. How, then, is it possible for me to conceive 
an 'originating Mind,' which I must represent to 
myself as a series of states of consciousness, being 
antecedent to the infinity of changes simultaneously 
going on in worlds too numerous to count, dispersed 
throughout a space which baffles imagination ? " * 

If the doctrine of an "originating Mind" prove to be 
one half as absurd as the doctrine of this paragraph, 
it ought to be given up at once. Note first the defini- 
tion of mind as a " series of states of consciousness." 
I verily believe with Mr. Spencer, that such a mind 
could not originate either the universe or any thing 
else ; but the definition looks to me very much like 
a " symbolic idea of the illegitimate order." A state 
must be the state of something. Consciousness im- 
plies a being who is conscious ; motion implies 
something moved ; and so a state implies a being 
which is in that state. Mind is neither a state nor 
a series of states, but a being which experiences 
these states. I do not hesitate a moment to class 
Mr. Spencer's definition with the " pseud-ideas." I 
grant that in many things the Divine Mind must be 
altogether different from ours. We gain our knowl- 
edge from without ; with Him all is self-contained. 
Our art is but the faintest copy of what is original 
with Him. From our own experience we can gain no 

* " Popular Science Monthly," July, 1872. 



1 20 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

clew to very many phases of the Creative Mind. 
His ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as 
our thoughts. We can predicate nothing of the Divine 
Reason save the purest intellection. But the funda-r 
mental conception of mind is that of a self-deter- 
mining intelligence ; and whenever we meet with a 
free intelligence, we call it a mind. It may differ in 
many ways from us, but in the underlying freedom 
and knowledge we find a common measure. 

Now can such a mind, free and intelligent, be the 
cause of all things ? Mr. Spencer thinks not ; for 
though it is abundantly credible that linear forces in 
their blind play should have produced the great har- 
mony of the universe, a mind, he thinks, would be- 
come confused and giddy. I defy any one to get out 
of Mr. Spencer's argument, apart from the nonsense 
about the " series of states," any thing more than the 
suggestion that an infinite mind would have more on 
hand than it could attend to. He speaks of the infinity 
of processes going on upon our earth, multiplies it 
by the number of the stars, and asks if it is credible 
that one mind should originate and control all this. 

Nay, let us obey Mr. Spencer, and think upon the 
multitudinous changes which are forever going on. 
Let us begin with the small series of changes which 
take place on a day in June, when 

" Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it, that reaches and towers, 

And groping blindly above it, for light, 
" Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers," 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 121 

and remember that all these changes are along lines of 
order and of beauty. Think of the universal war- 
ring of tremendous forces which is forever going on, 
and remember that out of this strife is born, not 
chaos, void and formless, but a creation of law and 
harmony. Bear in mind, too, that this creation is 
filled with the most marvelous mechanisms, with the 
most exquisite contrivances, and with forms of the 
rarest beauty. Remember, also, that the existence 
of these forms for even a minute depends upon the 
nicest balance of destructive forces. Abysses of 
chaos yawn on every side, and yet creation holds on 
its way. Nature's keys need but to be jarred to turn 
the tune into unutterable discord, and yet the har- 
mony is preserved. Bring hither your glasses, and 
see that from atomic recess to the farthest depth 
there is naught but " toil cooperant to an end." All 
these systems move to music ; all these atoms march 
in tune. Listen until you catch the strain, and then 
say whether it is credible that a blind force should 
originate and maintain all this. Mr. Spencer thinks 
it is. There is no difficulty in supposing a mechan- 
ical force to have done it all ; but the hypothesis of 
a Creative Mind, which animates nature and realizes 
His thought in all its phenomena, is too incredible to 
be entertained for a moment ; because, forsooth, such 
a mind would have too much to attend to. Surely 
science must be asleep, and philosophy at its lowest 
ebb, when such sheer nonsense as this is allowed to 



122 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

usurp, unchallenged, a prominent place in either. Do 
you speak of the stars ? " Lift up your eyes on high, 
and behold who hath created these things, that bring- 
eth out their host by number : he calleth them all by 
names ; by the greatness of his might, for that he is 
strong in power, not one faileth." Does the infinity 
of orderly change astonish you ? " Hast thou not 
known ? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting 
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, 
fainteth not, neither is weary ? there is no searching 
of his understanding." The absurd definition of 
mind is miserable enough as an argument ; but the 
assertion that a mind would be unequal to the situa- 
tion, is positively ludicrous. 

One active force in nature, the scientists say ; and 
psychology gives them the choice of making that 
force nothing, or else the activity of an ever-living 
Will. Yet possibly some may feel that this doctrine 
is at variance with known scientific facts. How can 
we reconcile this doctrine with the fixedness of na- 
ture's laws ? The answer is, " With Him is no vari- 
ableness, neither shadow of turning." Why may not 
Will adopt for purposes of its own a fixed mode of 
working ? Why may not the steady law be made 
the expression of the constant thought ? 

But is not gravitation an impersonal force ? 
Surely, since all the splendid achievements of as- 
tronomy are based upon this conception, we must 
suppose it to represent a fact. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 123 

Yes, we may suppose it to represent a fact, while 
it is not the fact itself. In mechanics, when we 
have a single force we can always decompose it 
into two or more forces which shall produce the 
same effect ; or if we have a number of forces, 
we can compound them, and obtain an equivalent 
single force. In every such case of resolution and 
composition, the reasoning for one member of the 
equation holds also for the other ; yet we are not 
dealing with the fact itself but with its equivalents — 
the resultant is the equivalent of the components, 
and conversely. By this device the problem is made 
amenable to our calculus, and the known equivalence 
justifies our confidence in the conclusion. 

Now scientific theories I believe to be of this na- 
ture ; they are equivalents of the fact, and not the fact 
itself. Being equivalents, they serve the purposes of 
science as well as the fact itself would — enabling us to 
previse phenomena, and giving unity to our knowl- 
edge, which are the chief functions of science. Thus 
the atomic theory works upon matter as composed of 
indivisible atoms. Different elements have atoms 
of different sizes, and perhaps of different forms ; but 
the size and form for each element are constant. Our 
chemical philosophy is based almost entirely upon 
this conception. By means of it we are able to co- 
ordinate many chemical facts, and to form some dim 
idea of the method of chemical combination. But 
while the theory has a scientific value, it is extremely 



124 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

doubtful whether it represents any fact of the inte- 
rior constitution of matter ; it is an equivalent, not a 
fact. So, too, the vibratory theory of light, and the 
classifications of natural history, serve to explain 
many facts, to give unity to our knowledge, and to 
forecast the future. So far they are equivalents, and 
we may safely rely upon the conclusions based upon 
them, but there is no proof that they are any thing 
more. Indeed, the fact that they all fail to explain 
all the phenomena, indicates that they are like those 
mathematical calculations which are based upon ap- 
proximative methods — true enough for practical pur- 
poses, but sure to diverge from the truth if carried 
too far. They all have a parallax with reality, imper- 
ceptible indeed for terrestrial measures, but at the 
distance of the fixed stars the sub-tending line is the 
diameter of the earth's orbit. 

This, then, is what I mean in saying that the 
scientific conception of gravitation represents a 
fact, while it is not the fact itself. Indeed, this 
is the way in which Newton stated the theory; 
not that there is a power in the sun by which 
the planets move, but that they move as*they would 
if there were such a power. That the force of grav- 
ity really resides in the atoms, Newton declared to 
be a conception which no philosopher could enter- 
tain, because it implies that inert matter can act 
where it is not ; and that, too, across an absolute 
void, and without any media whatever. Mr. Mill felt 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 125 

called upon to rebuke Newton for this statement, 
insisting that no one now finds any difficulty what- 
ever in believing that matter can act across a void, 
and without media ; and he further advised that every 
philosopher who feels inclined to say what can be, 
and what cannot, should hang this statement of New- 
ton's in his study as a warning against similar rash- 
ness. But since Mr. Mill had already filled the first 
half of his " System of Logic " with proofs that there 
is no active power in matter, and that even matter 
itself is only an assumption, which is far from being- 
sure, it would seem that Mr. Mill himself might 
with very great propriety have hung this statement 
of Newton's in his study, together with some of his 
own, and might with advantage have pondered them 
well before he uttered his rebuke. The truth is, that 
to the empirical intellect, whatever is customary is 
clear ; as to the empirical conscience, whatever is 
customary is right. Science has the laws of the 
planets' movements, and that is all that it needs to 
know. As to the force by which they move, science 
can say nothing ; that is a question for philosophy, 
and philosophy repudiates the conception of an im- 
personal force, as involving irrationalities ; and de- 
clares this great coordinating force of nature to be 
the activity of Him in whom we live, and move, and 
have our being. 

I look upon this idea of force as the only mediator 
between science and religion. It has long been seen 



126 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

by all thinking men that it is impossible to make any- 
satisfactory partition of territory between these 
rivals. Wherever there are events, whether in mind 
or in matter, science will look for a law. Wherever 
there are events, whether in mind or matter, religion 
will look for God. If science and religion are mu- 
tually exclusive, there must be constant encroach- 
ments, with resulting feuds, until one or the other is 
destroyed. It may be possible for some men to keep 
their religion in one hemisphere of their brain and 
their science in the other ; but to most men such a 
feat is impossible. Few minds are foggy enough to 
have hostile ideas encamping in the same head with- 
out detecting each other's presence. Nor is it desir- 
able that it should be otherwise, for such a composite 
figure is more suggestive of hypocrisy than any thing 
else. If one lobe believes only in immutable law, 
the other can have little faith in prayer. 

But it seems to me that this idea of force, which is 
as much the necessity of science as it is of religion, 
makes an honorable reconciliation possible, because it 
enforces on the one hand the need of an originating 
and controlling mind, and on the other leaves the meth- 
od of its working undetermined. Science discovers 
laws, but is forced to provide an ever-active admin- 
istrator ; this satisfies religion. Religion proves an 
ever-living Will, but is compelled to grant its steady 
method ; this satisfies science. Thus each can look 
without aversion upon the claims and efforts of the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 127 

other. To the claim of religion that mind is not 
last but first, and rules forever, science says, Amen. 
To the claim of science, that this mind has its steady- 
method, religion answers, 

" God is law, say the wise, O soul, and let us rejoice. 
For if he thunder by law, the thunder is still his voice." 

Chastened and purified by needed criticism, relig- 
ion takes up again the strain of ancient piety, and 
sings, with a deeper and more assured knowledge, 
that He holdeth the deep in the hollow of his hand, 
and causeth the day-spring to know his place. To 
religion the cause, to science the method ; to relig- 
ion the power, to science the path : this, I believe, 
is the only possible basis for an abiding peace. 

But as it is desirable to continue this argument a" 
little further, that we may more clearly see the true 
character of Mr. Spencer's system, let us grant 
what he assumes, the existence of a universal im- 
personal force, and inquire how he accounts for the 
intelligence which the universe seems to manifest. 
We shall find it to be only the old atheistic system 
of chance in a new, and not much improved, edition. 
One force of infinite differentiations, but without in- 
telligent play, is that able to turn chaos into crea- 
tion ? is that able to hit upon and maintain organic 
forms which are marvels of adaptive skill ? is that 
able to construct the eye with its double lenses to 
refract the light, with its chamber darkened that no 



128 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

wandering reflections may disturb the image, with 
its optic nerve at the optical focus for the reception 
of the picture, and with its telegraphic line of com- 
munication with the brain ? If life is a resultant of 
force, it is not the result of a single form but of many. 
Mechanical, chemical, elective, thermal forces enter 
into the compound ; and only by the nicest adjust- 
ment is life maintained. Is this underlying linear 
force capable of originating and maintaining the 
happy balance ? The old theory that out of a jumble 
of atoms organic forms arise, is scouted by every 
one ; is it any more credible that they should arise 
out of a jumble of forces ? Mr. Spencer sees no di- 
ficulty in such a view, and bases his faith upon the 
" Instability of the Homogeneous," the " Multiplica- 
tion of Effects," and "Differentiation and Integra- 
tion ;" three chapters in which he explains the process 
of evolution. 

Take any mass of homogeneous matter ; its parts 
stand differently related to both internal and external 
forces. The exterior will receive light and heat, 
while the interior will receive no light and little 
heat. The same is true of the action of any of the 
forces ; they must affect different parts unequally. 
But this unequal action will result in unequal 
changes, by which the original homogeneity will be de- 
stroyed. Heterogeneity, being once established, will 
cause a still more varied reaction of the several parts, 
and the necessary result will be a still more complex 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 129 

heterogeneity. The increasing differentiation of the 
parts will cause the incident forces to split into a 
variety of forms — light, heat, electricity — all of which 
will increase the heterogeneity and " multiply effects." 
Here, then, we have a force constantly at work to 
produce diversity. Under its operation the homo- 
geneous nebula spun itself into orbital rings, and 
condensed into solid globes. Its working has pro- 
duced all the heterogeneity of the earth's crust, 
and the complexity of its physical aspects. Now 
we cannot, to be sure, trace all its operations, but 
here is a force which, in some of its turnings 
and twistings, must produce living forms. This 
is the sum of the chapters on the " Instability 
of the Homogeneous " and the " Multiplication of 
Effects." It will hardly be credited without a quo- 
tation. 

" Take a mass of unorganized but organizable mat- 
ter — either the body of one of the lowest living forms 
or the germs of one of the higher. Consider its cir- 
cumstances — either it is immersed in water or air, or 
within a parent organism. Wherever placed, how- 
ever, its outer and inner parts stand differently re- 
lated to surrounding agencies—nutriment, oxygen, 
and the various stimuli. But this is not all. Whether 
it lies quiescent at the bottom of the water or on the 
leaf of the plant, whether it moves through the water, 
preserving some definite attitudes, or whether it is in 
the inside of an adult, it equally results that certain 



1 30 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

parts of its surface are more exposed to light, heat, 
or oxygen, and in others to the material tissues and 
their contents. Hence must follow the destruction 
of its original equilibrium." — P. 370. The over- 
turned equilibrium is assumed to take the direction 
of the parent form. 

But as this assumption in the case of the higher 
organisms would task the credulity even of an evolu- 
tionist, Mr. Spencer proceeds to mask it as follows : 

" Of course in the germs of the higher organisms, 
the metamorphoses immediately due to the instability 
of the homogeneous are soon masked by those due 
to the assumption of the hereditary type. Such 
early changes, however, as are common to all classes 
of organisms, and so cannot be ascribed to heredity, 
entirely conform to the hypothesis. . . . 

" But as already hinted, this principle, understood 
in the simple form here presented, supplies no key 
to the detailed phenomena of organic development. 
It fails entirely to explain generic and specific pecul- 
iarities ; and indeed leaves us equally in the dark re- 
specting those more important distinctions by which 
families and orders are marked out. Why two ova, 
similarly exposed in the same pool, should become 
the one a fish and the other a reptile, it cannot tell 
us. That from two different eggs placed under the 
same hen should respectively come forth a duckling 
and a chicken, is a fact not to be accounted for on 
the hypothesis above developed. We have here no 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 1 3 1 

alternative but to fall back upon the unexplained 
principle of hereditary transmission. The capacity 
possessed by an unorganized germ of unfolding into 
a complex adult, which repeats ancestral traits in the 
minutest details, and that even when it has been 
placed in conditions unlike those of its ancestors, is 
a capacity we cannot at present understand. . . . 
Should it, however, turn out, as we shall hereafter 
find reason for suspecting, that these complex differ- 
entiations which adults exhibit are themselves the 
slowly-accumulated and transmitted results of a proc- 
ess like that seen in the first changes of the germ, 
it will follow that even those embryonic changes due 
to hereditary influence are remote consequences of 
the alleged law. Should it be shown that the slight 
modifications wrought during life on each adult, and 
bequeathed to offspring along with all preceding 
modifications, are themselves unlikenesses of parts 
that are produced by unlikenesses of conditions. 
Then it will follow that the modifications displayed 
in the course of embryonic development are partly 
direct consequences of the instability of the homo- 
geneous, and partly indirect consequences of it." — 

Pp- 373, 374- 

This is admirable strategy, but it does not alter 
the argument. It extends the time a little, but after 
all every thing comes back, directly or indirectly, to 
the instability of the homogeneous. The homoge- 
neous germ must lapse into heterogeneity. Action 



132 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

and reaction will be further complicated by this 
change — "effects" will be "multiplied," and, the re- 
sult will be more heterogeneity. The direction of 
these changes is, to be sure, mainly a matter of guess- 
work — for, as Mr. Spencer well says, " the actions 
going on through ont an organism are so involved 
and subtle that we cannot expect to identify the par- 
ticular forces by which particular integrations are 
effected." The finished result will be, let us suppose, 
a baby. Out of the infinite heterogeneities possible, 
this unintelligent force will hit each time upon that 
particular heterogeneity, a baby. When born, it will 
bring with it eyes fitted for the light, ears adapted to 
sound, lungs adapted to the air, bones to support the 
structure, muscles to move it, a nervous system to 
coordinate and control its motions ; yet this marvel- 
ous adaptation of the parts to each other, and of the 
whole to its surroundings, and this astonishing pre- 
vision of future needs, are the results of the " Insta- 
bility of the Homogeneous " and the " Multiplication 
of Effects." Two pregnant principles surely. But 
grant that the homogeneous is unstable, why should 
it not fall into a chaotic heterogeneity ? Why should 
not the heterogeneous changes cancel themselves, 
that is, why should not the result of one heterogenity 
be to cancel a previously existing one ? Why should 
there be any progress at all ? Most of all, why 
should there be any orderly and intelligent series of 
changes such as are here exhibited ? Chaotic heter- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 133 

ogeneities are infinite ; how does it happen that this 
overturned homogeneity escapes all those, and lights 
upon a heterogeneity which is impact of intelligence, 
foresight, and purpose ? There is no answer to these 
questions in any thing which Mr. Spencer has said. 
The " Instability of the Homogeneous " might pos- 
sibly account for chaos ; it is totally insufficient to 
explain creation. 

Mr. Spencer attempts to supplement this reason- 
ing by the chapter on " Differentiation and Integra- 
tion." The doctrine is that like tends to get with 
like under the operation of a uniform force. It is 
illustrated by the fact that a smart breeze in October 
carries away the dying leaves and allows the green 
ones to remain. This is called "segregation." The 
sorting action of rivers is another example ; first the 
larger stones are deposited, next the smaller, and 
finally the mud and sand settle far out at sea. Some 
phenomena of crystallization are also appealed to ; 
and in society we find that birds of a feather flock 
together. All these are instances of "segregation." 
Mr. Spencer has a way of using the vaguest and 
most far-fetched analogies as identities, which often 
makes it impossible to get at any defined meaning. 
But I suppose he intends by these illustrations to 
teach that there is some kind of sorting action in the 
body, whereby similar kinds of organic matter get 
together. Bone matter unites, nervous matter segre- 
gates, etc. This is the reason why each organ ob- 



134 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

tains its own peculiar nourishment. Omitting to 
inquire as to the fact, it suffices to say that even if 
true the argument is not improved. Simple aggre- 
gation would satisfy the law of segregation ; but 
something more than aggregation is necessary for 
organic systems. Nervous matter must not only be 
segregated, but segregated in a very peculiar manner. 
The marvelous network of nerves which incloses and 
interlaces the body is a remarkable order of segrega- 
tion, and one which is hardly illustrated by the blow- 
ing away of dead leaves or the washing of sand out 
of gravel. The same remark is true for all the com- 
ponents of the body. Bones, muscles, veins, sinews, 
must be segregated after an exact pattern to serve 
the needs of the structure. It is not segregation 
alone, but the segregation in such peculiar forms, in 
forms so happily adapted to the wants of the organ- 
ism, and which display such marks of intelligence ; 
this it is which is the real wonder ; and this is en- 
tirely unaccounted for by any thing in the " Instability 
of the Homogeneous," the "Multiplication of Effects," 
or the process of " Differentiation and Integration." 
I avow it ; this is nothing but the Lucretian system 
of chance dressed up in a pseudo-scientific jargon. 
The atoms, Lucretius says, must in infinite time try 
all forms ; and some of these forms will live. The 
homogeneous, says the later Lucretius, must fall into 
the heterogeneous ; and some of these heterogeneities 
will live. Will some one point out the difference be- 



Review of Herbert Spe?icer. 135 

tween them ? An imposing and confusing termin- 
ology, which is made to take the place of argument, 
is the only advantage which the modern has over the 
ancient. 

The purely hap-hazard character of Mr. Spencer's 
system appears more clearly in the volumes on Bi- 
ology and Psychology, where these principles are 
applied at length. I will close this part of the dis- 
cussion by exhibiting the account of the genesis of 
Nerves and Nervous Systems. The thesis is, that 
nerves and nervous systems are formed by the pas- 
sage of motion along lines of least resistance ; and 
the argument is as follows : 

" When, through undifferentiated tissue, there has 
passed for the first time a wave of disturbance from 
some place where molecular motion is liberated to 
some place where it is absorbed, the line of least 
resistance followed must be an indefinite and irreg- 
ular one. Fully to understand the genesis of nerve, 
then, we must understand the physical actions which 
change this vague course into a definite channel, 
that becomes ever more permeable as it is more 
used. . . . 

" To aid our conceptions we will, as before, take 
the rude analogy furnished by a row of bricks on end, 
which overthrow one another in succession. If such 
bricks on end have been adjusted so that their faces 
are all at right angles to the line of the series, the 
changes will be propagated along them with the least 



136 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

hinderance ; or, under certain conditions, with the 
greatest multiplication of the original impulse. For 
when so placed, the impact each brick gives the next, 
being exactly in the line of the series, will be wholly 
effective ; but when they are otherwise placed it will 
not. If the bricks stand with their faces variously 
askew, each in falling will have a motion more or less 
diverging from the line of the series, and hence only 
a part of its momentum will impel the next in the 
required direction. Now, though in the case of a 
series of molecules the action can be by no means so 
simple, yet the same principle holds. The isomeric 
change of a molecule must diffuse a wave which is 
greater in some one direction than in all others. If 
so, there are certain relative positions of molecules 
such that each will receive the greatest amount of 
this wave from its predecessor, and will so receive it 
as most readily to produce a like change in itself. A 
series of molecules thus placed must stand in sym- 
metrical relations to one another — polar relations. 
And it is not difficult to see that, as in the case of 
the bricks, any deviation from symmetrical or polar 
relations will involve a proportionate deduction from 
the efficiency of the shock, and a diminution in the 
quantity of molecular motion given out at the far 
end. But now, what is the indirect result when a 
wave of change passes along a line of molecules thus 
unsymmetrically placed ? The indirect result is, that 
the motion which is not passed by the unsymmetri- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 137 

cally-placed molecules, goes toward placing them 
symmetrically. Let us again consider what happens 
with our row of bricks. When one of these in fall- 
ing comes against the next standing askew, its im- 
pact is given to the nearest angle of this next, and so 
tends to give this next a motion round its axis. 
Further, when the next thus moved delivers its mo- 
tion to its successor, it does this not through the 
angle on the side that was struck, but through the 
diagonally-opposite angle ; and, consequently, the 
reaction of its impact on its successor adds to the 
rotary motion already received. Hence the amount 
of force which it does not pass on is the amount of 
force absorbed in turning it toward parallelism with 
its neighbors. Similarly with the molecules. Each 
in falling into its new isomeric attitude, and passing 
on the shock to its successor, gives to its successor 
a motion which is all passed on if the successor 
stands in polar relations toward it, but which if the 
relation is not polar is only partially passed on, 
some of it being taken up in moving the successor 
toward a polar relation. One more consequence is to 
be observed. Every approach of the molecules toward 
symmetrical arrangement increases the amount of 
molecular motion transferred from one end of the 
series to the other. Suppose that the row of bricks, 
which were at the first very much out of parallelism, 
have fallen, and that part of the motion given by 
each to the next has gone toward bringing their 



138 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

faces nearer to parallelism ; and suppose that, with- 
out further changing the positions of their bases, the 
bricks are severally restored to their vertical atti- 
tudes ; then it will happen that if the serial overthrow 
of them is repeated, the actions, though the same as 
before in their kinds, will not be the same as before 
in their degrees. Each brick, falling as it now does 
more in the line of the series, will deliver more of its 
momentum to the next ; and less momentum will be 
taken up in moving the next toward parallelism with 
its neighbors. If, then, the analogy holds, it must 
happen that in the series of isomerically-changing 
molecules, each transmitted wave of molecular motion 
is expended partly in so altering the molecular atti- 
tudes as to render the series more permeable to future 
waves, and partly in setting up changes at the end 
of the series ; that in proportion as less of it is ab- 
sorbed in working this structural change, more of it 
is delivered at the far end and greater effect is pro- 
duced there ; and that the final state is one in which 
the initial wave of molecular motion is transmitted 
without deduction — or rather, with the addition of 
the molecular motion given out by the successive 
molecules of the series in their isomeric falls. 

" From beginning to end, therefore, the develop- 
ment of nerve results from the passage of motion 
along the line of least resistance, and the reduction 
of it to a line of less and less resistance continually. 
The first opening of a route along which equilibrium 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 139 

is restored, between a place where molecular motion 
is in excess and a place where it is in defect, comes 
within this formula. The production of a more con- 
tinuous line of that peculiar colloid best fitted to 
transmit the molecular motion also comes within 
this formula, as does likewise the making of this 
line thicker and more even. And the formula also 
covers that final process by which the line, having 
been formed, has its molecules brought into the polar 
order which least resists, and indeed facilitates, the 
transmission of the wave." * 

This entire process, it must be remembered, is be- 
low the microscopic limit. These facts are seen only 
with the mind's eye, and I greatly question whether 
they have any objective existence. When Mr. Spen- 
cer began the paragraph, he was in doubt con- 
cerning his doctrine ; but after he had imagined the 
series of bricks falling down and standing up again 
of themselves, and assumed that the analogy was 
perfect between the bricks and the unseen molecules, 
he waxes bolder, and emerges from his imaginations 
with the formula that nerves are formed by the pas- 
sage of motion along lines of least resistance, and 
this formula is said to include every case. Motion 
makes the nerve, lays down the line of gray matter 
along which the nervous influence travels, and 
sheathes it with the white coating which prevents 
its dissipation. The argument is the purest imagina- 

* Principles of Psychology, vol. i, pp. 517, 518. 



140 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

tion ; not even the microscope knows any thing- about 
the process here indicated. But allowing it to pass, 
it throws no light whatever on the structure of the 
nervous system. For if it were admitted that mo- 
tion along lines of least resistance can build up 
nerves, the lines of least resistance next need expla- 
nation. Consider the marvelous interlacing of the 
nerves, and how necessary that complexity is for the 
uses of the structure, and then tell us how it came 
to pass that the lines of least resistance arranged 
themselves so happily. An eye would be useless 
without an optic nerve, and accordingly a line of 
least resistance ran down to the eye. An ear would 
be worthless without the auditory nerve, but, fortu- 
nately, a line of least resistance was not wanting. 
There is not a muscle in the body which, apart from 
nervous connection, is of the slightest use ; and to 
guard against this waste, the lines of least resistance 
run to every one. The body would be constantly 
exposed to injury if its surface were not sensitive, 
and so the lines of least resistance establish sentinels 
so close to one another that not even the point of a 
needle can creep betwen them. The lines of least 
resistance, upon Mr. Spencer's theory, are the real 
marvel ; and these are left totally unexplained. 

Let us now steady ourselves for a moment before 
that mass of protoplasm in which no lines of commu- 
nication are yet set up, and inquire what the result will 
be when motion is initiated in any part ? Mr. Spencer 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 141 

says : " The isomeric change of a molecule must dif- 
fuse a wave which is greater in some one direction than 
in all others. If so, there are certain relative positions 
of molecules, such that each will receive the greatest 
amount of this wave from its predecessor, and will 
so receive it as most readily to produce a like change 
in itself." Now why should that "some one direc- 
tion" in which the wave of molecular motion is 
" greater than in all others " be in any case, not to 
say in each case, the one direction which the needs 
of the organism make imperative ? Why should it 
take the complex direction of the complete nervous 
system ? There is no a priori necessity for such an 
arrangement ; on the contrary, there is the very 
strongest a priori improbability against it. The bare 
possibility is a thing of chance, and that of a high 
infinitesimal order, while the argument is based 
upon as pure fancies as ever entered Don Quixote's 
brain. Indeed, Mr. Spencer himself at times has 
misgivings that his account is rather fanciful, and he 
enters the caveat that he does not insist that the 
primitive nervous system was formed in this way ; 
he only suggests this as a possible way. He further 
says : " A critical reader may ask, How can a state 
of molecular tension between two places separated 
by a great mass of amorphous organic substance 
cause transmission along a definite line which divides 
and subdivides in the way described ? 

" Doubtless such a process is not easy to imagine 



142 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

under the conditions we are apt to assume. But the 
apparent difficulty disappears when, instead of the 
conditions we are apt to assume, we take the condi- 
tions which actually occur. The error naturally fallen 
into is that of supposing these actions to go on in 
creatures of considerable bulk ; whereas, observation 
warrants us in concluding that they go on in ex- 
tremely small creatures. . . . 

" The structure described having been first formed 
on this extremely small scale admits of eventual 
enlargement to any scale. Conducing to the growth 
and preservation of the individual, inherited by prog- 
eny capable by the aid it yields of growing still 
larger, and bequeathed with its accumulated incre- 
ments of size and development to successively higher 
types that spread into better habitats and adopt 
more profitable modes of life, this mere rudiment 
may, in course of geologic epochs, evolve into a con- 
spicuous nervous apparatus possessed by a creature 
of large size. And so by this slow indirect method 
there may be established lines of nervous communi- 
cation where direct establishment of them would be 
impossible." * 

Two critical remarks are here to be made : 
First. The extension of time which Mr. Spencer 
bespeaks explains nothing. An evolved steam-en- 
gine or loom would be no less the work of intelli- 
gence than one made in a day. The involved rela- 

* Principles of Psychology, vol. i, p. 530. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 143 

tions, the adaptation of means to ends, the purpose 
which it displays — these demand intelligence in the 
maker, no matter how far removed he may be from 
the work. I repudiate entirely Mr. Spencer's sug- 
gestion, that the work which it were folly to attribute 
to chance to-day, might be very rationally attributed 
to it in geologic epochs. Mr. Spencer is clearly not 
anxious to make many nervous systems in this fash- 
ion. He only seeks to get a primitive one started 
in some very simple organism ; and, once set agoing, 
it can take care of itself and go on in endless im- 
provement. But appearances are often deceiving ; 
the nature of any thing is to be judged by what 
comes out of it, and not merely by its size and seem- 
ing. If that primitive system contained within it 
capacities for such astonishing development as 
Mr. Spencer claims for it, then it was not the 
simple thing he assumes it to be, and the ques- 
tion comes back again in all its force, What in- 
volved all these possibilities ? Mr. Spencer has no 
answer. 

The second criticism is, that Mr. Spencer seems to 
have forgotten that he is engaged in proving the doc- 
trine of evolution, and cannot be allowed to assume 
it. The force of his reply lies entirely in the assump- 
tion that evolution is an established fact. This, how- 
ever, is not the only time that Mr. Spencer has done 
this. Many of his arguments, as we shall hereafter 
see, assume the point in dispute, and are worthless 



144 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

without the assumption. It is needless to comment 
upon such admirable strategy. 

Such is the scientific account of the origin of 
nerves and nervous systems. As a piece of ingen- 
ious imagination it deserves to rank very high. As 
an example of nerve, too, it deserves an equally high 
rank ; for surely it must require a great deal of nerve 
to manufacture nerves in this fanciful fashion, and 
then parade the result as having the exactness of 
science and the certitude of demonstration. After 
these luminous imaginings, and the caveat previously 
mentioned, Mr. Spencer goes on his way rejoicing, 
flattering himself that he has proved something, and 
has rendered the " carpenter theory " of a superin- 
tending mind entirely superfluous by these baseless 
and inconsistent fancies. The only thing more aston- 
ishing than the argument itself, is that it should ever 
have been believed. 

But what need to pursue weakness and folly further ? 
Let us sum up this chapter. We have seen that the 
philosophical principles of Parts I and II are in abso- 
lute contradiction to each other ; that if Part I is true, 
Part II must be sent to the purgatory of "pseud-ideas ;" 
while if Part II is true, the sentence of banishment 
against religious ideas must be recalled. We have 
seen that the positive proof of the correlation of the 
physical with the vital and mental forces is of the 
weakest kind, even if there were no opposing evi- 
dence ; while we have further seen that the doctrine 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 145 

is in the plainest opposition to undoubted facts. We 
have seen in addition that the same mental law which 
warrants the belief in external power, also warrants 
the resolution of that power into a personal activity. 
Finally, we have seen that, even granting to Mr. 
Spencer his impersonal force, the proof that it can 
do the work of intelligence is a compound of scien- 
tific terms and the purest romance. When stripped 
of their seeming science, his explanations are those 
which atheism has always given — chance and time. 
These are the great wonder-workers. The future 
may assign the " First Principles " a place in the 
" Poetry of Science," but I am confident that it will 
do no more. That such a compound of inconsistent 
fancies and palpable contradictions should have held 
a prominent position in science for ten years, only 
shows how low logical and metaphysical studies have 
fallen among us, and is altogether the best example 
I can recall of the " Stability of the Heterogeneous." 
10 



[46 Review of Herbert Spencer. 



CHAPTER IV. 

PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 

\\ 7E come now to the most difficult problem 
^ * which evolution has to solve. In the lower 
field of life we seem still to be dealing with matter 
and force in space relations, and the evolutionists' 
argument has a superficial plausibility. But when 
we rise to the mental plane we meet with a new set 
of objects, with sensations, with emotions, and with 
thoughts, in all of which we detect no space rela- 
tions and no mechanical measures. An impassable 
gulf seems to separate the world of mind from the 
world of matter. If there be any mechanical connec- 
tion it is an occult one, and the reality of the fact must 
be made plain before we can yield our assent. For, 
not to mention the difficulty of evolving thought and 
feeling from the clashing of inert atoms, before this 
doctrine can be proved, the validity of logical laws 
and the trustworthiness of all our mental processes 
must be established. Otherwise, the results reached 
by reasoning will be untrustworthy, and all science 
and evolution must disappear together. I expect to 
find, upon a psychological examination, that the 
metaphysical data of all reasoning transcend the 
teaching of experience. In that case the evolution- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 147 

ist can take his choice : either he can admit their 
validity, which will prove fatal to his system, or he 
can deny it, which will be intellectual suicide. 

In examining the testimony, let us bear in mind the 
points which must be proved : first, that the physical 
forces and sensation correlate ; second, that thought 
is only transformed sensation ; third, that the intui- 
tions of reason, while valid for all space and time, are 
the product of experience ; and, fourth, that the soul 
has no self-determining power. If any of these 
points cannot be made out, the theory breaks down 
hopelessly in its application to mind. 

In applying his theory to the explanation of men- 
tal evolution, Mr. Spencer finds a philosophy ready- 
made to his hand. The experience-philosophy has 
sought, for ages, to prove that all that is in the mind 
has been derived from sensation. Beginning with 
this, it aims to show how all the laws of thinking 
and all our apparently simple beliefs have been gen- 
erated. The law of causation, the principles of 
formal logic, the reality of an external world, the 
moral postulates of conscience, and even the belief 
in personality, are but elaborated and refined sensa- 
tions. The astronomer who accepts the nebular 
theory teaches that the original mist must condense 
and build up solid globes, and determine all their 
characteristics. So the experience-philosophy, postu- 
lating only a mist of sensation, teaches that that mist 
must condense, and differentiate, and integrate until 



148 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the solid frame-work of mind is built up. There 
is, indeed, much in the mind, at present, that seems 
independent of experience, like the belief in logical 
axioms or in causation ; and these beliefs even put 
on airs, and repudiate their parentage, and, worst of 
all, assume to lord it over experience itself. Such 
filial impiety deserves severe rebuke ; and the expe- 
rience-philosopher proceeds to reduce these pretend- 
ers to becoming humility by showing them the 
baseness of their birth. The fragrance and beauty 
of a flower are but transformations of the mold at 
its root ; so all that seems independent or noble in 
the mind, is but transformed pains and pleasures. 
The mind has no powers of its own, but gains them 
from without, and its laws are all enacted for it by 
experience. Whatever claims to be independent of 
this source is an impostor, whose claims must be 
met with becoming scorn. This philosophy is 
adopted by Mr. Spencer, without any important 
modifications, as illustrating the doctrine of evolu- 
tion. By means of the correlation of forces, he 
hooks the beginnings of life to the physical world ; 
and the experience-philosophy is offered as the 
explanation of mental evolution. In the hands of 
all its defenders, this philosophy has always taken 
an insane delight in knocking out its own brains ; 
and, as habit strengthens with age, we shall find it 
performing this interesting feat with unusual gusto, 
under the direction of Mr. Spencer. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 149 

But, before he can avail himself of the associa- 
tionalists' teachings, Mr. Spencer must bridge the 
gulf which separates thought from motion, mind 
from matter. Until this is done, he cannot assume 
to explain mental evolution. 

His chief argument has already been given in 
Chapter III. It amounted, as we said, to this : 
Nervous states affect mental states, and conversely ; 
therefore, each is a form of the other. 

The fact alleged is undoubted, and has been 
admitted by all realists since the world began. It 
is no new revelation that sickness has a depressing 
effect upon the mind ; that the various physical 
stimuli affect mental activity ; that powerful emo- 
tions exalt or depress the functions of the organism ; 
that an injured brain entails unconsciousness, or 
that a mind diseased can drag the body down into 
ruin. None of these facts are recent discoveries ; 
and if we grant the truth of the spiritualistic doc- 
trine, this interdependence of soul and body, upon 
which the materialist bases his belief, is precisely 
what we should expect. Admit, as we must, that 
at present the activity of the soul is conditioned 
by the organism, and all these consequences follow. 
If the soul communicates with the external world by 
means of a material organism, then the interests of 
both must be bound up together as long as the part- 
nership continues. If the external world report itself 
through nervous tides, then the condition of the 



150 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

nervous system will be a most important factor of the 
resulting knowledge. If, on the other hand, the body 
is the mechanism for revealing thoughts and feelings, 
it again follows that the state of the instrument must 
affect the manifestation. If the appointed pathways 
of sensation are broken up, no reports can pass 
within. If the dial-plate be defaced and broken, 
signals can be made no longer. If the wires be dis- 
ordered, so that only wild and fitful currents can 
flow over them, the result must be mental distrac- 
tion at one end, and aimless action at the other ; 
just as the wandering earth-currents, which interfere 
with the Atlantic cable, spell out only illiterate mes- 
sages and inarticulate cries. To suppose it other- 
wise would make the connection useless, and our 
bodies would be of no more interest to us than our 
cast-off clothes. 

I think, too, that there is a moral reason for the in- 
terdependence. If the soul use the body as an instru- 
ment for sinning, it shall find itself sold into degrad- 
ing and bitter bondage by its partner in crime. If it 
make itself the home of evil, it shall find the body 
dragged down into ruin along with it, and turned into 
a bulletin for the publication of its shame. If it were 
not for this connection, the moral discipline of our 
present life would be almost entirely lost. But, not 
to rest the argument upon this, I repeat that the in- 
terdependence of physical and spiritual conditions is 
a necessary result of the hypothesis. Mr. Spencer's 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 151 

facts are admitted by every psychologist, but there 
are insuperable objections against assuming that the 
mental state is but a transformation of its physical 
antecedent ; a relation undoubtedly exists, but it is 
impossible to believe in a correlation. 

For the physical antecedent does not explain the 
fact, even in the case of sensation — the department 
in which the argument is most plausible. Let us 
follow the in-going nerve-current until it reaches the 
center of the brain. Let us note the isomeric changes 
of the nerves and the vibrating molecules of the brain. 
We do not come upon sensation. On the contrary, 
motion, molecular machinery, is all we find. There 
is nothing in all this to give any hint of the world 
of consciousness beyond. Mr. Spencer himself re- 
cognizes a difficulty here, and says : 

" How this metamorphosis takes place ; how a 
force existing as motion, heat, or light, can become a 
mode of consciousness ; how it is possible for aerial 
vibrations to generate the sensation we call sound, 
or for the force liberated by chemical changes in the 
brain to give rise to emotion — these are mysteries 
which it is impossible to fathom. But they are not 
profou'nder mysteries than the transformation of the 
physical forces into each other." * 

Mr. Spencer is mistaken. If the received doctrine 
about the physical forces be true, there is no mystery 
at all in the change of one into another. For we are 

* First Principles, p. 280. 



152 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

told that all these forces are motions ; heat, magnet- 
ism, light, all are modes of motion. The transfor- 
mation, then, of the physical forces is simply a change 
of one kind of motion into another — which is not so 
rare a thing after all ; and if, as seems probable, the 
difference between these motions is only a difference 
of faster and slower, the problem becomes simpler 
still. Now, with all deference to Mr. Spencer's 
dictum, I must say that the change of one kind of 
motion into another is one thing, but to change mo- 
tion into feeling, which is not motion and which can- 
not by any effort be thought of as motion, is quite 
another. If we follow the physical forces in their 
transformations with one another, the antecedent ac- 
counts for the result ; but when we attempt to follow 
them into their correlations with consciousness, the 
assumed cause gives no explanation whatever of the 
effect. 

Again, if there be a mechanical correlation of 
thought and motion, the relation must be necessary 
and constant. Now, if thought and sensation are 
only transformed nerve-force, the connection should 
be invariable ; and whenever the proper forces present 
themselves at the chamber of the mind, the corre- 
sponding mental state should invariably appear. But 
in truth nine tenths of the physical antecedents of 
sensation never produce any sensation at all. In the 
concentration of thought, the hum of the school-room, 
the roar of the street, the thousand sights and sounds 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 153 

of nature are lost, or attract no attention. This is a 
fact familiar to every one. The antecedents of sen- 
sation are there. From drum and retina come up 
the nervous tides which are said to correlate with 
thought, but they perish without notice. And so 
nerve-currents are constantly pouring up from skin, 
from muscles, from eye, from ear, but the most of 
them pour unnoticed over into the abyss which divides 
thought from the subtlest motion and the rarest mat- 
ter. What do they correlate with ? The sequence of 
the physical forces is rigid and unvarying ; but the 
sequence of sensation depends entirely upon the at- 
tention of the mind within. Sensation is impossible 
without an inner activity of the soul. Often, indeed, 
this activity is only semi-conscious ; but let it be 
some faint sound or some dim sight which we are 
trying to catch, and our activity rises into conscious 
effort at once. We attend, we listen, we concentrate 
ourselves upon the particular organ, through which 
we look for the report; and without this attention, 
this concentration, this conscious effort, there is no 
sensation. This fact itself is sufficient to utterly dis- 
prove the correlation. There is an inhabitant within, 
who is not nerve-currents, but who from nerve-cur- 
rents reads off the outer world. 

Again, if this theory be true, the same physical 
antecedent ought to produce the same mental states, 
which is far enough from being true. The same 
words spoken in the same way may be praise or 



154 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

insult, and the mental state varies accordingly. If 
struck by accident we have one feeling ; if struck on 
purpose we have quite another. The physical ante- 
cedents are the same ; why are the results various ? 
There are myriad facts of this nature, none of which 
can be explained by a mechanical correlation of 
thought and motion. A discriminating, judging 
mind, back of nerve-currents, is the only possible 
explanation. 

The theory fails, then, to explain even those mental 
states which stand directly related to physical ante- 
cedents ; but it breaks down completely when it at- 
tempts to explain those psychical states which have 
no direct physical antecedents, and which constitute 
by far the greatest part of our conscious experience. 
One sits in the twilight and muses. Pictures come 
and go. He wanders again through scenes, once 
familiar, but which now are many miles and years 
away. The friends of his' childhood look in upon 
him, and tones heard long ago re-vibrate on his ear. 
The vast dim halls of memory light up, and from the 
niches where stand the images of dead affection, 
step forms of life, and fall into his arms once more. 
Faithful hearts driven asunder by necessities too 
sharp to be resisted meet again, and the living man 
tells the dead of his loneliness and longing. What 
is the physical antecedent of this, and similar ac- 
tivity ? It is a world of our own creation in which 
we pass most of our time. What physical ante- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 155 

cedents can be shown to be the creator? That 
there are any is pure assumption without the shadow 
of proof. 

Mr. Spencer does indeed offer the lame and impo- 
tent suggestion, that this activity, though it does not 
correlate directly with the physical forces, does corre- 
late with the vital, which in turn correlate with the 
physical ; and that thus all mental action comes back 
ultimately to the physical world. The proof is that 
mental action is accompanied by nervous waste, and 
hence the two are identical. But, two difficulties 
meet us in accepting this reasoning : first, that nerv- 
ous waste may be effect instead of cause, and hence 
explains nothing ; and, second, that the assumption 
that it is the cause, is, first, a bald begging of the 
question, and, next, is no explanation in any case. 
The combination of a few grains of carbon, nitrogen, 
etc., throws no light on mental phenomena. 

Again, according to this theory there can be no 
such thing as self-determination, and if there is such 
a thing the theory is false. Mr. Spencer admits this, 
and on the ground that freedom is destructive to his 
theory he distinctly denies its possibility. Once, in- 
deed, for the sake of a fling at an opponent's view, 
he objects to that view that it teaches a most rigid 
necessity in all thought and action ; but, after he has 
fittingly rebuked such teaching, he falls back on the 
same doctrine. But we have already seen enough to 
make us suspect that Mr. Spencer is not always the 



156 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

most reliable teacher ; let us then appeal from his 
decision. Can the soul initiate action or can it 
not? 

The appeal is to the universal consciousness, and 
the answer is undoubted. Whatever theory it may 
upset, the soul is self-determinant. It can act, or not. 
It can act in this direction, or in that. It avails 
nothing to say that it cannot act without a motive ; 
motives are reasons for action, not causes, in philo- 
sophical sense. It is equally useless to say that with- 
out the ^physical forces the volition could not be 
carried out. The soul manifests itself through ma- 
terial media, and of course can do so only when the 
so-called material forces are present. But what was 
it that set the muscles to contracting and forces to 
working ? What was it that overturned the original 
equilibrium and precipitated effort in this direction 
instead of that ? Did the forces set themselves to 
work, or was there a controlling cause behind them ? 
Which supposition is true ? The latter, the universal 
consciousness being witness, and that hidden cause, 
as Dean Alford would say, " that's me." 

There is indeed a simplicity in this doctrine of cor- 
relation which is very attractive. To begin with only 
matter and attraction, and mount by successive steps 
through chemistry and physiology, until not only mat- 
ter and force, but thought and mind also, are under our 
feet — until love, conscience, and faith fall into line with 
the physical sciences, this is certainly an attractive 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 157 

programme — it offers to do so much with such a small 
capital ! Given the raw rudiments of matter and 
force, and an unlimited supply of time, and there will 
be no difficulty in grinding out an angel. Unfor- 
tunately, it cannot be done. Mental science cannot 
be studied as a continuation of physical science. 
There is no doubt a psychological value in physio- 
logical research, but such research can never blossom 
into psychology. As I have previously pointed out, 
if it were possible to observe all that passes in the 
body, and gaze to the center of the brain, we should 
gain no mental facts. We should see motion, not 
sensation ; vibration, not thought. Motion in the 
spinning of brain molecules, or the passage of nerve 
currents, would be all that the sharpest observer 
could detect ; nor would there be any thing in this 
to suggest the world of thought beyond. This can 
be reached only through self-consciousness ; indeed 
all fact is reached only through consciousness. 
Physiology may boast as it will of the light it has 
thrown upon mental problems ; psychology alone 
makes physiology possible. 

Now the soul clearly and emphatically distinguishes 
itself, both from the external world and from the or- 
ganism which it inhabits. It rules the latter, and 
causes it to do its bidding ; and even in those things 
in which the soul is subject to the body, it no less 
clearly distinguishes itself from the body. It con- 
sciously resists sleep, weakness, fainting, disease; 



158 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

and even when it is overborne and conquered, it still 
testifies to its independent being. 

In every act of knowledge, too, the soul implicitly 
affirms for itself a separate existence. The mind is 
implicitly given in all knowledge, as the eye and ear 
are postulated in all seeing and hearing ; but so un- 
obtrusive is the mental affirmation that men fall into 
the folly of supposing that physical science, which 
mental science alone makes possible, can displace the 
latter. In every act of knowledge two things are 
always given — the knower and the known — and they 
are given as distinct from each other. We may 
restrict our attention to the subject, and the result 
will be mental science ; or we may give it to the 
object, and the result will be physical science. But 
in every act of knowing both are given, and given, I 
think, in exact equipoise. No discredit, then, can be 
cast on the one, without also destroying the other. 
Hence physical science and mental science are twins, 
and, like the Siamese twins, inseparable. The very 
nature of the cognitive act renders it impossible to 
arrange them in linear order, and the science which 
attempts such an arrangement must commit both 
logical and psychological suicide. The discredit 
cast on the subjective does and must destroy the ob- 
jective. I submit, then, that the linear arrangement 
of the sciences which Mr. Spencer contemplates is 
psychologically impossible. 

There are some, however, who, while admit- 



\ 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 159 

ting the fact of this antithesis, deny that it is 
trustworthy. To be sure the mind does distin- 
guish itself from the scene, but this distinction 
represents no reality in the nature of things. The 
so-called object is but a representation which the 
mind makes to itself, through the operation of its 
own laws. I believe, on the contrary, that an exam- 
ination would show that this primary distinction 
cannot be argued away, but that it is sure beyond all 
question. If either member of this antithesis is to 
be destroyed, it must be the objective. The subjec- 
tive element is given beyond all possibility of doubt. 
Self as perceiving, is the most fundamental datum of 
consciousness. The object can be reached only by 
accepting the testimony of the subject ; deny that 
testimony, and the universe disappears in a bottom- 
less pit of nihilism. I insist upon it, the subjective 
element must stand, to make any science possible. 
The only alternative is to admit the distinction, or to 
deny the object ; and either would be fatal to Mr. 
Spencer's theory. In the last analysis, materialistic 
science is a contradiction. 

And, strangely enough, no one insists upon this 
distinction more strongly than Mr. Spencer himself. 
He says : 

" Where the two modes of being which we dis- 
tinguish as subject and object have been severally 
reduced to their lowest terms, any further compre- 
hension must be an assimilation of these lowest 



160 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

terms to one another, and, as we have already seen, 
this is negatived by the very distinction of subject 
and object, which is itself consciousness of a differ- 
ence transcending all other differences. So far from 
helping us to think of them as of one kind, analysis 
but serves to render more apparent the impossibility 
of finding for them a common concept — a thought 
under which they can be united." — Vol. i, p. 157. 
" That a unit of feeling has nothing in common with 
a unit of motion becomes more than ever manifest 
when we bring the two into juxtaposition." — P. 158. 
Again he says : " Nevertheless it may be as well to 
say here, once for all, that if we were compelled to 
choose between the alternatives of translating mental 
phenomena into physical phenomena, or translating 
physical phenomena into mental phenomena, the 
latter alternative would seem the more acceptable 
of the two." — P. 162. 

If I had not been aware beforehand of Mr. 
Spencer's almost supernatural appetite for self- 
contradiction, I should have thought on reading 
these passages that he intended to take his own 
advice, and " rest content with that duality of them 
which our constitution necessitates." But to do 
this would be to destroy his theory, and that is 
too much to ask of any one. Accordingly, though 
"a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a 
unit of motion," and though "analysis but serves to 
render more manifest the impossibility of finding for 



Review of Herbert Spencer. i6r 

them a common concept, and though "the antithesis 
of subject and object is never to be transcended 
while consciousness lasts," Mr. Spencer neverthe- 
less assures us that "it is one and the same ultimate 
reality which is manifested to us subjectively and 
objectively." — P. 627. How he found it out I don't 
know ; it clearly could not have been while he was 
conscious, for the distinction "is never to be tran- 
scended while consciousness lasts." Luckily, how- 
ever, Mr. Spencer gives us a much more concrete 
statement as to the way in which subject and object 
are united in the following paragraph : 

" For just in the same way the object is the unknown 
permanent nexus, which is never itself a phenomenon, 
but is that which holds phenomena together ; so is 
the subject the unknown permanent nexus, which is 
never itself a state of consciousness, but which holds 
the states of consciousness together." This is the 
definition of the subject ; and then, though it is 
"unknown," he proceeds to show what it is: "For, as 
shown in the earlier part of this work, an idea is the 
psychical side of what on its physical side is an in- 
volved set of molecular changes propagated through 
an involved set of nervous plexuses. That which 
makes possible the idea is the pre-existence of these 
plexuses so organized that a wave of molecular mo- 
tion diffused through them will produce, as its psy- 
chical correlative, the components of the conception 

in due order and degree. This idea lasts while the 
11 



1 62 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

waves of molecular motion last — ceasing when they 
cease ; but that which remains is the set of plexuses. 
These constitute the potentiality of the idea, and 
make possible future ideas like it. Each such set 
of plexuses perpetually modified in detail by per- 
petual new actions, capable of entering into countless 
combinations, and capable of having its several parts 
variously excited just as the external object presents 
its combined attributes in various ways — is thus the 
permanent internal nexus for ideas answering to the 
permanent external nexus for phenomena." — Vol. ii, 
p. 484. 

Thus the great distinction of subject and object 
vanishes, and self is resolved into the organism. 
The distinction disappears ; though Mr. Spencer de- 
clares it cannot be interpreted away. The assimila- 
tion is made ; though he says that analysis but serves 
to make manifest its impossibility. Units of feeling 
are resolved into units of motion, though the two 
have nothing in common. Mr. Spencer insists that 
the criterion of truth is the impossibility of conceiv- 
ing the opposite ; and argues this at great length 
against the skeptics and idealists. It appears that 
he has changed his mind since he wrote "First 
Principles," for then the inconceivability of the oppo- 
site was no proof at all — at least, in the earlier part of 
the work. But since this is the criterion of truth, it 
would seem that a distinction which is insisted upon 
as the most fundamental in our mental operations, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 163 

ought to be accepted as real. But this would put 
mind outside of the physical chain, and accord- 
ingly Mr. Spencer, in the teeth of all logic, denies 
the distinction. When it suits his purpose, he ad- 
mits the testimony of the mind ; when it does not, 
he proceeds to worry and bully it out of countenance. 
All that the mind says in his favor is true, all that 
it says against him is false — this is Mr. Spencer's 
position. 

To this the associationalists reply that the idea of 
subject and object, the distinction of myself from the 
world, is of comparatively recent origin ; and, instead 
of being simple, is consolidated from millions of expe- 
riences which stretch back through unknown ages. 
There was a time in the history of mental evolution 
when this distinction was unknown. These ideas then 
are not elementary but highly complex, and nothing 
can be built upon them. 

This alleged fact is only a fancy, and implicitly 
begs the question ; but even if we admit it, the argu- 
ment is not helped. Indeed, this constant assump- 
tion of the experience-philosophers, that every thing 
must be measured in its beginnings, is a profound 
fallacy, if not a gross logical imposition. When we 
refer to the laws of thought as valid for all space and 
time, and to the law of conscience as binding upon 
all moral beings, they seek to throw discredit upon 
these ideas by showing how they have been built up. 
Do you see that jelly quiver when touched ? that is 



164 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the raw material of mind. Do you see that cringing 
cur ? that is the dawn of the moral sentiment. 

But, gentlemen, what do you mean ? You, who talk 
of development — tell us plainly whether we are devel- 
oping faculty, knowledge, power ; or whether we are 
developing illusion, delusion, and baseless dreams. 
Give us a plain answer here, and we shall know what 
to say. If the former supposition be true, then these 
faculties as we have them, and not as they appeared 
in some early cell, or even as they manifest them- 
selves in infancy, but as they are to-day here in their 
highest form, in their latest utterances, are the most 
trustworthy. If we are indeed developing, we need 
not inquire into the belief of the first polyp to reach 
the truth ; but the last utterances of our faculties, as 
they have disengaged themselves from mental chaos, 
must be accepted as of the highest authority. The 
product must be judged by the finished work, and not 
by its raw beginnings. 

But if the latter supposition — that we are only 
growing into illusion — be true, then we must seek 
truth in the minds of pre-human apes, or rather in 
the blind stirrings of some primitive pulp. In that 
case we can indeed put away all our science, but we 
must put away the great doctrine of evolution along 
with it. The experience-philosophy cannot escape 
this alternative ; either the positive deliverances of 
our mature consciousness must be accepted as they 
stand, or all truth must be declared impossible. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 165 

What then, I ask again, will Mr. Spencer do with 
this plain distinction which the soul makes between 
itself and ail else ? He can admit it, which is real- 
ism ; he can deny the object, which is idealism ; he 
can deny the subject, which must end in nihilism. 
But any one of these alternatives would be fatal to 
his system. 

Once again Mr. Spencer's system breaks down. Not 
even the wonderful flying leaps of his peculiar logic 
serve to carry him across the gulf which separates 
mind and matter. The plainest facts of mental ex- 
perience, and the most emphatic utterances of con- 
sciousness, dispute his right of way. If, then, we 
were inclined to be. severely logical, we might issue 
an injunction restraining Mr. Spencer from any fur- 
ther advance until this pass has been securely bridged. 
But inasmuch as our logical clemency has before been 
extended, even so far as to wink at a multitude of 
logical sins, let us once more exercise our royal 
prerogative, and graciously grant to Mr. Spencer the 
beginnings of life and sensation ; and, perhaps, with 
this capital, he will be able to accomplish something. 

His first attempts, however, awaken a fear that this 
royal clemency will be abused. Having collected a 
multitude of facts concerning nervous structure and 
function, and having also " grouped together the 
inductions drawn from a general survey of mental 
states and processes," Mr. Spencer declares that he 
is " prepared for a deductive interpretation." The 



1 66 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

nature of this deduction is shadowed forth in the fol- 
lowing quotation : 

" If the doctrine of evolution is true, the inevitable 
implication is that mind can be understood only by 
observing how mind is evolved. If creatures of the 
most elevated kinds have reached those highly inte- 
grated, very definite, and extremely heterogeneous 
organizations they possess through modifications upon 
modifications accumulated during an unmeasurable 
past — if the developed nervous systems of such creat- 
ures have gained their complex structures and func- 
tions little by little — then, necessarily, the involved 
forms of consciousness, which are the correlatives of 
these complex structures and functions, must have 
arisen by degrees. And as it is impossible truly to 
comprehend the organization of the body in general, 
or of the nervous system in particular, without tracing 
its successive stages of complication ; so it must be 
impossible to comprehend mental organization with- 
out similarly tracing its stages. Here, then, we com- 
mence the study of mind as objectively manifested in 
its ascending gradations through the various types of 
sentient beings." — Vol. i, p. 291. 

This is the key-note of all that follows, and a type 
of evolution logic. Mr. Spencer, on the strength of 
this paragraph, begins with the yeast plant and red 
snow alga, and traces life and mind from these hum- 
ble beginnings up to man, There are, however, 
some objections to the procedure. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 167 

First, all knowledge begins at home. All that 
we know is known in consciousness, and what- 
ever cannot report itself there must remain for- 
ever unknown. All that is known of the outer 
world, is known only through modifications of con- 
sciousness ; and all that we know of the mental 
operations of others, can be known only by assim- 
ilating them to our own. How do we know that 
the motions of animals have any psychological 
meaning at all ? It is only as we infer that like 
motions mean the same in them as in us, it is only 
as we know our own mind, that we can take the first 
step toward a knowledge of mind in the lower orders. 
Now, since this is so, since human psychology must 
precede all others, and since the psychology of the 
yeast plant and the polyps is, to say the least, a matter 
of pure conjecture, I submit that it is not wise to 
give such inquiries any great weight. To attempt to 
use them to throw discredit upon human psychology, 
is self-destructive ; for their psychological value de- 
pends upon the truth of our self-knowledge. 

Still another objection arises. This procedure is 
warranted only on the assumption that evolution is 
an established fact ; whereas I understand that Mr. 
Spencer is trying to prove the doctrine. What is the 
proof of the doctrine ? Why, all these arguments, 
running through a thousand pages. But the argu- 
ments are worthless without the assumption of the 
doctrine. The arguments support the doctrine, and 



1 68 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the doctrine supports the arguments. Do you object 
to this? It is no more than fair play. One good 
turn deserves another. And this is " severe logic," 
this is the "Modern Aristotle." The mutual atti- 
tude of both teacher and taught, in this " New Phi- 
losophy," is fitly represented only by that ancient 
couplet : 

" Open your mouth and shut your eyes, 

And I'll give you something to make you wise." 

That the conscious ego is a being capable of knowl- 
edge and thought, and able to direct its own activity 
into such channels as it may choose, is a conception 
which, to Mr. Spencer, is supremely "pseud." He 
denies it in the plainest terms, and insists that mind 
is composed throughout of feelings, consolidated or 
otherwise. Of course, he recognizes the existence 
of self as constantly as any one. In this way he 
gives some scanty plausibility to his argument ; but 
as soon as he is confronted with self as a witness 
against him, he unceremoniously turns the "pseud- 
idea" out of doors. Plainly, the best established 
facts of consciousness must expect no quarter what- 
ever from the " New Philosophy," if they are so im- 
prudent as to raise any objections. It would not be 
very strange if the facts of consciousness repudiated 
the " New Philosophy " with equal emphasis. 

Feelings are all in all. The ultimate units of mat- 
ter when differently combined build up the chemica 
elements, the crust of the earth, and all the variety 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 169 

of organic life ; so feelings, which are the ultimate 
mental unit, compose by their different combinations 
all that is in the mind, and originate all its powers. 
The problem is to show that a string of feelings, 
which existed long before there was any one to have 
them, at last becomes conscious of itself and of its 
constituent parts, apprehends their relations to one 
another, reflects upon them, and draws conclusions 
from them, and all the while is but a feeling, and 
the process is but a feeling. In this way conscious- 
ness, the belief in self and the outer world, the ab- 
stract processes of thought, etc., are manufactured. 

We should have less difficulty with this theory 
if it were clearly shown that a feeling can exist 
apart from a subject. A free feeling apart from a 
conscious subject, is inconceivable; just as a free 
thought apart from a thinker is inconceivable. Such 
a thing might be possible in the depths and deep 
night of the unknowable ; but it is not possible 
in the realm of rationality. The feelings are intro- 
duced to create the subject ; but the feelings them- 
selves are inconceivable except as belonging to a 
conscious subject. This may be a weakness of our 
thought, but it is an inveterate one; and until it be 
disproved, we shall feel constrained to view it as a 
power. Every thing cannot be granted to the needs 
of Mr. Spencer's system. 

I am ready to learn ; but before I can take the oath 
of allegiance to this doctrine, another difficulty must 



1 yo Review of Herbert Sp 






be resolved. Thought, and sensation, are given in 
consciousness as very different things. To have a 
feeling is one thing, to reflect upon it, to compare it 
with others, to draw conclusions from its perceived 
relations, etc., these seem to be quite another. What 
kinship is there between a sensation, and a purely in- 
tellectual operation, such as the study of a mathemat- 
ical problem, or any other of the reflective processes 
of thought ? If we are to rely upon our present con- 
sciousness, they have no common measure. A per- 
ception of things through sensation is one act ; a 
perception of their relations through comparison 
and reflection, a generalization of these relations 
into laws, and a combination of these laws into a 
system, this is an activity of another kind. The 
only reason for denying it is found in the exigencies 
of a false system — a reason which logic does not 
recognize. 

Besides, too, in all this activity the ego plays an 
important part. It is conscious of itself as active and 
controlling, and it insists upon saying so. This is 
probably an unseemly impertinence, at all events, a 
great unkindness, because it stands very much in the 
way of the system ; and yet, in opposition to both 
courtesy and Mr. Spencer, it insists upon itself as 
active and controlling. So emphatic is this self- 
assertion that, if it be false, we seem to have no test 
of truth whatever, save the unsupported dictum of 
Mr. Spencer. These objections would probably not 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 171 

have much weight with a philosopher of the " New 
School ; " but surely a philosophy whose first prin- 
ciples deny all our primary beliefs, ought to be re- 
ceived with caution. 

But we must not be too scrupulous, and, besides, 
a vigorous profession of an obnoxious creed is said 
to help one's faith amazingly. 'The experience- 
philosophy has steadily resisted these distinctions, 
and has sought to show how thought and reason 
and self-determination are only sensations that have 
grown proud and forgotten their origin. The great 
instrument for the contemplated reduction is the 
association of ideas. Sensations and feelings cluster 
together, and so pass into thought. The method is 
as follows : 

"The cardinal fact to be noted as of co-ordinate 
importance with the facts above noted is, that while 
each vivid feeling is joined to but distinguished 
from other vivid feelings, simultaneous or successive, 
it is joined to and identified with faint feelings that 
have resulted from foregoing similar vivid feelings. 
Each particular color, each special sound, each sensa- 
tion of touch, taste, or smell, is at once known as un- 
like other sensations that limit it in space or time, 
and known as like the faint forms of sensations that 
have preceded it in time — unites itself with fore- 
going sensations, from which it does not differ in 
quality but only in intensity. 

" On this law of composition depends the orderly 



172 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

structure of mind. In its absence there could be 
nothing but a kaleidoscopic change of feelings — an 
ever transforming present without past or future. It 
is because of this tendency which vivid feelings have 
severally to cohere with the faint forms of all preced- 
ing feelings like themselves that there arise what we 
call ideas. A vivid feeling does not by itself consti- 
tute a unit of that aggregate of ideas entitled knowl- 
edge. Nor does a single faint feeling constitute such 
a unit. But an idea, or unit of knowledge, results 
when a vivid feeling is assimilated to, or coheres 
with, one or more of the faint feelings left by such 
vivid feelings previously experienced. From moment 
to moment the feelings that constitute conscious- 
ness segregate — each becoming fused with the whole 
series of others like itself that have gone before it ; 
and what we call knowing each feeling as such or 
such is our name for this act of segregation. 

" The process so carried on does not stop with the 
union of each feeling, as it occurs, with the faint 
forms of all preceding like feelings. Clusters of 
feelings are simultaneously joined with the faint 
forms of preceding like clusters. An idea of an ob- 
ject or act is composed of groups of similar and 
similarly related feelings that have arisen in con- 
sciousness from time to time, and have formed a 
consolidated series of which the members have par- 
tially or completely lost their individualities."— Vol. i, 
p. 183. " Consider now, under its most general form, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 173 

the process of composition of mind described in fore- 
going sections. It is no more than this same process 
carried out on higher and higher platforms, with in- 
creasing extent and complication. As we have lately 
seen, the feelings called sensations cannot of them- 
selves constitute mind, even when great numbers of 
various kinds are present together. Mind is consti- 
tuted only when each sensation is assimilated to the 
faint forms of antecedent-like sensations. The con- 
solidation of successive units of feeling to form a 
sensation is paralleled in a larger way by the con- 
solidation of successive sensations to form what we 
call a knowledge of the sensations as such or such — 
to form the smallest separable portion of what we 
call thought as distinguished from mere confused 
sentiency." — Vol. i, p. 185. 

We have, in this extract, a complete outline of the 
associational doctrine, and an almost complete list of 
its errors. The process here described is sufficient 
to account for all the mind's beliefs and operations. 

Our first criticism upon it is that the language in 
which the doctrine is expressed, betrays it. " Each 
particular color, each special sound, each sensation of 
touch, taste, or smell, is at once known as unlike other 
sensations that limit it in space or time, and known 
as like the faint forms of certain sensations that have 
preceded it." Who is it that knows these sensations 
as like and unlike? Who is it that remembers the 
faint forms of past sensation ? Who is it that sep- 



174 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

arates these various feelings into their appropriate 
groups ? The object of these groupings and " segre- 
gations" is to account for thought, memory, judg- 
ment, etc., and, lo! a thinking, judging, recognizing 
mind is on the spot to attend to its own birth. It 
would hardly be surprising if, under such favorable 
circumstances, the process proved successful. 

Again, Mr. Spencer will not allow us to know sensa- 
tions until they are " segregated," but insists that a 
knowledge of them as like or unlike must precede segre- 
gation. How, indeed, things can be known as like or 
unlike when, first, we know nothing about them, and, 
second, when there is no one to know them, does not 
very clearly appear. There is also some difficulty in 
understanding how memory can be built up by a 
process which assumes it at the start ; nor can self- 
consciousness be very far away when we begin to 
remember these sensations as "past experiences." 
Yet these are the absurdities into which the associa- 
tionalists have always fallen. This association of 
ideas implies the very things which it is supposed to 
explain away. What associates the ideas ? What dis- 
tinguishes them as like and unlike ? What recognizes 
them as " past experiences ? " What is it which, in 
all perception, so combines tactual, visual, and other 
impressions, that the object presents itself as a unit 
in consciousness ? At this point the associationalists 
have always left a fatal gap in their system. To sup- 
pose that the ideas and sensations know each other 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 175 

as like and unlike, and then enter into combination, 
is absurd ; yet they must either do this, or refer the 
association to the activity, partly intentional, partly 
constitutional, of the soul itself. 

To escape this alternative, Mr. Spencer ventures 
upon the astounding proposition that the association 
takes place primarily, not in the mind, but in the 
nervous system. Like nervous states get together, 
and difference themselves from others ; and whenever 
one of these states comes into consciousness, it drags 
all its kindred along with it. He expounds the doc- 
trine thus : 

" Changes in nerve-vesicles are the objective cor- 
relatives of what we know subjectively as feelings ; and 
the discharge through fibers that connect nerve-vesi- 
cles, are the objective correlatives of what we know 
subjectively as relations between feelings. It follows 
that just as the association of a feeling with its class, 
order, genus, and species, group within group, an- 
swers to the localization of the nervous change within 
some great mass of nerve-vesicles, within some part 
of that mass, within some part of that part, etc. ; so 
the association of a relation with its class, order, 
genus, and species, answers to the localization of the 
nervous discharge within some great aggregate of 
nerve-fibers, within some division of that aggregate, 
within some bundle of that division. Moreover, as 
we before concluded that the association of each feel- 
ing, with its exact counterparts in past experience, 



176 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

answers to the re-excitation of the same vesicle or 
vesicles ; so here we conclude that the association 
of each relation with its exact counterparts in past 
experience answers to the re-excitation of the same 
connecting fiber or fibers. And since, on the recog- 
nition of any object, this re-excitation of the plexus 
of fibers and vesicles before jointly excited by it, an- 
swers to the association of each constituent relation 
and each constituent feeling with the like relation 
and the like feeling, contained in the previous con- 
sciousness of the object, it is clear that the whole 
process is comprehended under the principle alleged. 
If the recognized object, now lacking one of its traits, 
arouses in consciousness an ideal feeling answering 
to some real feeling which this trait once aroused, 
the cause is that, along with the strong discharge 
through the whole plexus of fibers and vesicles di- 
rectly excited, there is apt to go a feeble discharge 
to those vesicles which answer to the missing feeling, 
through those fibers which answer to its missing re- 
lations, involving a representation of the feeling and 
its relations." — Vol. i, p. 270. 

As a work of the creative imagination, this extract 
must certainly rank very high ; but as a scientific 
statement it can hardly be considered a success ; for, 
in the first place, neither psychology nor physiology 
knows any thing about the process here indicated. 
When the brain is examined with a microscope, there 
are no indications that it is even capable of vibrating 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 177 

in the fashion postulated, to say nothing of exhibiting 
all the wonders which Mr. Spencer declares to be 
there. Before we can accept this account it must 
be shown that there is a nerve-vesicle answering to 
every idea ; and next it must be shown that, for 
every apprehended relation, there is a fiber connect- 
ing the vesicles which represent the related terms. 
There is, and can be, no proof whatever of these 
statements. Imagination, prompted by the necessi- 
ties of the system, is responsible for the whole ac- 
count. It is the doctrine which suggests the facts, 
and not the facts which suggest the doctrine. The 
same beggarly begging of the question, so palpable 
throughout the treatise, underlies this whole account. 
But suppose we admit that there is a nerve-vesicle 
for each idea, still the association of ideas is not ex- 
plained. What is it which associates the vesicles ? 
What separates them into like and unlike ? Has the 
nervous system the power of recognizing relations ? 
of appreciating difference ? of storing up in an appro- 
priate place the peculiar nervous combination an- 
swering to a given state of thought ? That would be 
to attribute to the nervous system the very powers 
of memory, judgment, etc., which it is expected to 
explain. But Mr. Spencer is prepared with an an- 
swer. This separation of nerve-vesicles is due to the 
law of segregation. I have already explained this 
law in the last chapter and given Mr. Spencer's illus- 
trations. The same wind carries off dead leaves and 
12 



178 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

allows the living ones to remain on the tree. A stream 
of water washes sand and mud from among stones 
and segregates them. Now because dead leaves, are 
blown away, and sand is washed out of gravel, there- 
fore the nerve-vesicles answering to like ideas get to- 
gether, and pull one another back and forth through 
consciousness. It seems incredible that Mr. Spencer 
should ever have deluded himself with such vague 
and unmeaning analogies as this. That he has de- 
luded others, also, is the highest possible proof of his 
statement that " most men do not think, but only 
think that they think." Surely it is a sublime and 
touching faith in the great doctrine of evolution, 
which enabled one to accept as science, such puerili- 
ties as these. 

But Mr. Spencer attempts another explanation of 
association. " As the plexuses in these highest nerv- 
ous centers, by exciting in distinct ways special sets 
of plexuses in the inferior centers, call up special 
sets of ideal feelings and relations, so by simulta- 
neously exciting in diffused ways the general sets of 
plexuses to which these special sets belong, they call 
up in vague forms the accompanying general sets of 
ideal feelings and relations — the emotional back- 
ground appropriate to the general conception. In the 
language of our illustration, we may say that the 
superior nervous centers in playing upon the inferior 
ones, bring out not only specific chords and cadences 
of feelings, but, in so doing, arouse reverberating 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 179 

echoes of all kindred chords and cadences that have 
been struck during an immeasurable past — producing 
a great volume of indefinite tones harmonizing with 
the definite tones." — Vol. i, p. 571. 

This statement, which recalls the doctrine of Aris- 
toxenus, that mind is the time of the organism, is 
the completion of the statement on page 125, that 
emotions are only remembered sensations, and are 
aroused by wandering currents which, in racing up 
and down the nerves, hit upon the vesicles that 
belong to the old sensations. 

Tn reply, it is sufficient to say of it, first, that 
there is no proof possible in the nature of the 
case ; and second, that this view does not explain 
why the " specific chords and cadences of feelings " 
should only " arouse reverberating echoes of all kin- 
dred chords and cadences ;" nor does it explain why 
these vagrant nerve-currents should hit upon only 
those emotions which harmonize with the specific 
conception. The doctrine is that a nerve current 
passes upward to the brain and appears in conscious- 
ness as a vivid feeling, that is, a sensation. But the 
same current after producing the sensation proceeds 
to " reverberate ;" it diffuses itself in feebler currents 
through the nervous system, and re-excites the ves- 
icles which answer to similar sensations in the past, 
and thus produces faint feelings, that is, emotions. 
Wonderful nerve-current to hit up.on the proper 
vesicles ! It is conceivable that mental chaos might 



180 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

result from such a process, but certainly mental 
order cannot. And thus Mr. Spencer goes on, first, 
confusing himself ; second, confusing the problem ; 
and third, and most wonderful confusion of all, he 
mistakes this universal confusion for a solution. 

The same process is supposed to explain memory. 
When any sensation or idea is aroused in conscious- 
ness, kindred ideas or sensations are brought out of 
experience by the process described ; and this is 
memory. The explanation misses the chief distinc- 
tion of memory. To remember a thing, is not to 
have the same idea or thought again — this might be 
accounted for by the laws of association ; but it is to 
have it with the consciousness of having had it be- 
fore. This relation of experience to self is the diffi- 
cult part of the question, and is entirely ignored in 
the explanation. Mr. Mill, with great frankness, con- 
fessed that the explanation of memory surpassed the 
resources of his philosophy. How a string of feel- 
ings should become conscious of itself as having a 
past, he declared to be a great mystery, and one 
which he could not fathom. Yet it is a question 
which the associationalist must solve, or surrender. 
Knowledge is not knowledge until it is related to 
self. It is only the enduring and identical ego which 
gives unity to experience, and makes memory pos- 
sible. It is not until the conception of an abiding 
self is thrown among the ever-shifting shades of feel- 
ing, that any backward glance can be cast upon yes- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 181 

terday, or any outlook upon to-morrow. Here, in 
this fact of memory we have a confirmation of the 
universal belief in an enduring self. 

But Mr. Spencer recognizes no difficulty whatever. 
Indeed, he does not even seem to have Understood what 
the fact implies. If he had he would probably have 
explained it in this way : Every idea has a nerve-vesi- 
cle answering to it, and that vesicle constitutes its only 
existence. To the idea of self, therefore, there must 
be an enormous vesicle, because it is such a great idea. 
And, since every mental relation answers to a fiber in 
the brain which connects the vesicles representing the 
ideas between which the relation is perceived, we must 
conclude that the reason why self appears in all 
memory is that there is an indefinite number of 
fibers connecting the vesicle which stands for self, 
with the other vesicles which represent all our 
various experiences. Whenever, then, one of these 
vesicles is excited, a discharge must pass along the 
connecting fiber to the vesicle which stands for 
self, and hence both ideas must appear in con- 
sciousness together. This explanation is in com- 
plete harmony with the hypothesis of evolution 
in general ; and whoever will duly weigh the evi- 
dence must see that nothing short of an over- 
whelming bias in favor of a preconceived theory can 
explain its non-acceptance. This account is as good 
as any that Mr. Spencer has given. It has just as 
much support from physiology or psychology as his 



1 82 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

own explanations have. Hartley's doctrine, of vibra- 
tions and vibratiuncles, is no more baseless than this 
so-called science ; and, indeed, they do not differ 
materially, except in terms. 

But if all these absurdities came to pass, the prob- 
lem is only confused, not solved. Sensation is 
sensation, and nothing more. A cluster of sensa- 
tions is sensation still, and in whatever way sensa- 
tion may be massed, it acquires no new character. 
Even if it were possible to conceive of a feeling 
which is not the feeling of a conscious subject, 
there is no warrant except the desperate extrem- 
ities of a false system, for believing that feelings 
change their nature by being massed. Conscious- 
ness makes the clearest and sharpest distinctions 
between feeling and thinking ; but consciousness 
has not any claim to respect from a philosopher 
of the " New School." 

In short, the explanations of this philosophy con- 
sist entirely in calling the most diverse powers and 
operations of the mind sensations, and then call- 
ing sensations nerve-currents. Mr. Spencer, when 
he meets with a difficulty, simply re-names it, and 
the work is done. If ideas associate, he explains 
it by the magic word " segregation." If they unite 
to form a unit of knowledge, it is a case of "in- 
tegration." If knowledge becomes more definite, 
it is called "differentiation." And after he has 
grouped every thing under these vague and un- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 183 

meaning terms, and has worked himself into a 
fit state of mental confusion in the process, he 
seems to think that he has explained something. 
To explain any grouping by segregation, is only to 
offer the very fact to be explained as an explana- 
tion ; and the same is true for the other cant words 
of the scheme which are made to cover such a mul- 
titude of logical sins : they all involve the very 
problem they pretend to solve. Now, I hold that 
the only value of psychology lies in its speaking 
clearly and directly to self -consciousness ; but the 
associational philosophy does not even pretend to do 
that. Every one of its characteristic explanations 
flies right in the face of our present consciousness, 
and when we complain of that, an appeal is made to 
the unknown. Mr. Mill requires us to look in upon 
the mind of the infant as it lies in the nurse's arms ; 
and, as we cannot do this, there is nothing for us to 
do but to accept Mr. Mill's statements or fancies 
about the matter. Mr. Spencer will have us go back 
through " countless ages ; " and tells us that, if we 
could have been there, we should have seen all that 
he claims. This is a great beauty of this philos- 
ophy. It works its wonders before the critic comes, 
and when he appears he is blandly told that it is too 
late. The wonders which have been wrought for 
him, and in him, are such as to render self-knowledge 
impossible. All its ingenuity is expended, not in 
explaining our present consciousness, but in explain- 



1 84 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ing it away. There is nothing left for us now, but 
to accept the equivalents which these philosophers 
choose to give ; and if the butchered members of 
our knowledge have no resemblance to the living 
form, they are, at least, as life-like as could be 
expected after the process. We must be content to 
walk by faith hereafter, and must no longer hope to 
walk by sight. If at any time the suspicion should 
cross our minds that this philosophy is a forgery, we 
cannot indeed appeal to consciousness or experience 
for support ; but we have the assurance of the philos- 
ophers that this is the only genuine autobiography 
of mental evolution. This is, to be sure, the only 
warrant it has ; but, except for those who have an 
" overwhelming bias," this is more than enough. As 
was to be expected, the difficulties thus removed 
from criticism are precisely those which this philos- 
ophy finds it most difficult to answer. When Mr. 
Spencer sought to establish the identity of thought 
and motion, it was done " in a superior nerve-center 
in a mysterious way ; " but the belief in causation 
and logical laws was provided for " untold ages " ago. 
Whenever a critical point is reached, Mr. Spencer, in 
common with all others of this school, retreats into 
the unknown, and, with the aid of an obliging " mys- 
tery," works out his system secure from all molesta- 
tion. The strategy ! the generalship ! The very least 
that should be decreed to such masterly tactics is an 
ovation, if indeed they do not deserve a triumph. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 185 

I utterly distrust this doctrine which begins 
with sensations, and builds knowledge by combining 
them. The subjective unity of self must be given 
before knowledge of any kind is possible ; but, even 
as applied to external things, the doctrine seems to 
me to invert the order of experience. According to 
this teaching, we have a knowledge of sensations 
long before we have a knowledge of things, and it is 
only an extended experience of feelings that sug- 
gests external things. On the contrary, I believe 
that our knowledge postulates being at the very 
start. Our first knowledge is of things, and the 
knowledge of sensations and qualities is a later 
birth, and is impossible until considerable advance 
in abstraction has been made. There is a primitive 
and constitutional synthetic action of the soul, which 
gives us qualities 'always in combination ; and it is 
only by a later analysis that we come to a knowledge 
of attributes, etc. Mr. Spencer has all along been 
arguing against this view ; but, to our great pleasure, 
it appears that he also holds the same opinion — a 
very happy example of his belief that there is a soul 
of truth in all things false. He says : 

"The postulate with which metaphysical reason- 
ing sets out is that we are primarily conscious only 
of our sensations, that we certainly know we have 
these, and that if there be any thing beyond these, 
serving as cause for them, it can be known only by 
inference from them. 



1 86 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

" I shall give much surprise to the metaphysical 
reader if I call in question this postulate, and the 
surprise will rise into astonishment if I distinctly 
deny it. Yet I must do this. Limiting the prop- 
osition to those epiperipheral feelings produced in 
us by external objects, (for these alone are in ques- 
tion,) I see no alternative but to affirm that the 
thing, primarily known, is not that a sensation has 
been experienced, but that there exists an outer 
object. Instead of admitting that the primordial 
and unquestionable knowledge is the existence of a 
sensation, I assert, contrariwise, that the existence 
of a sensation is an hypothesis that cannot be 
framed until external existence is known. This 
entire inversion of his conception, which to the 
metaphysician will seem so absurd, is one that inev- 
itably takes place when we inspect the phenomena 
of consciousness in their order of genesis— using, 
for our ' erecting glass,' the mental biography of a 
child, or the developed conception of things held in 
common by the savage and the rustic." — Vol. ii, 
p. 369. 

Mr. Spencer then goes on to show that with chil- 
dren, and rustics, and all who have not been dis- 
turbed by metaphysical reasonings, the certain 
knowledge is that there exist external things, and 
that these are directly known ; while sensations, 
attributes, etc., etc., are utterly unknown. With 
some qualifications, this statement may be accepted 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 187 

as true ; but if it is true, then mental evolution takes 
place in a way directly opposite to that which this 
philosophy assumes, and the doctrine falls to the 
ground. If the account is not true, the argu- 
ment for an external world, which Mr. Spencer 
bases upon it, vanishes. In either case his system 
suffers. 

But, before passing on to other difficult questions, 
let us rest and amuse ourselves by the following bit 
of pleasantry. Mr. Spencer's account of nerves and 
nervous systems we found extremely luminous ; but 
even that cannot compare with the following sun- 
clear explanation of frowning. To appreciate it 
fully, we must remember that Mr. Spencer's philos- 
ophy assumes to prove the doctrine of evolution ; 
and that it is one of the first principles of logic that 
to assume the point in dispute is inadmissible. 
Now for the explanation : 

" If you want to see a distant object in bright sun- 
shine, you are aided by putting your hand above your 
eyes ; and in the tropics, this shading of the eyes to 
gain distinctness of vision is far more needful than 
here. In the absence of shade yielded by the hand or 
by a hat, the effort to see clearly in broad sunshine 
is always accompanied by a contraction of those 
muscles of the forehead which cause the eyebrows to 
be lowered and protruded ; so, making them serve as 
much as possible the same purpose that the hand 
serves. The use of a sliding hood to a telescope, to 



t88 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

shield the object-glass from lateral sight, and espe- 
cially from the rays of the sun, illustrates the use of 
the contracted eyebrows when vision is impeded by 
a glare. Now, if we bear in mind that, during the 
combats of superior animals which have various 
movements of attack and defense, success largely 
depends on quickness and clearness of vision — if we 
remember that the skill of a fencer is shown partly 
in his power of instantly detecting the sign of a 
movement about to be made, so that he may be pre- 
pared to guard against it or to take advantage of it, 
and that in animals, as, for example, in cocks fight 
ing, the intentness with which they watch each other 
shows how much depends on promptly anticipating 
one another's motions, it will be manifest that a 
slight improvement of vision, obtained by keeping 
the sun's rays out of the eyes, may often be of great 
importance, and where the combatants are nearly 
equal, may determine the victory. Here is, indeed, 
no need to infer this a priori, for we have a posteriori 
proof : in prize-fights it is a recognized disadvantage 
to have the sun in front. Hence we may infer that 
during the evolution of those types from which man 
more immediately inherits, it must have happened 
that individuals in whom the nervous discharge ac- 
companying the excitement of combat, caused an 
unusual contraction of those corrugating muscles of 
the forehead, would, other things being equal, be the 
most likely to conquer, and to leave posterity — sur- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 189 

vival of the fittest tending in their posterity to estab- 
lish and increase this peculiarity." — Vol. ii, p. 546. 

This account, Mr. Spencer says, "is not obvious, 
and yet when found is satisfactory." Yes, about as 
satisfactory as the doctrine that hens set because the 
pressure of the eggs serve to relieve a supposed pain 
in the birds' abdomen ; as satisfactory, perhaps, as the 
earlier doctrine of appetencies — they all deserve to 
be put upon the same shelf, for all have about equal 
support in fact. I have quoted the paragraph because 
it brings so clearly into view the point to which I 
have so often referred — the everlasting assumption 
of the point to be proved, which underlies the entire 
discussion. Evolution is true — hence matter and mind 
must be one. Evolution is true — hence when it is 
necessary to explain the nervous system, he begins 
to romance on what might have been. Evolution is 
true — hence to account for emotions, he tells us of 
vagabond currents which, in their aimless wandering 
along the nerves, hit upon the vesicles which repre- 
sent ancient sensations. Evolution is true — hence 
nerve-vesicles which represent kindred ideas must 
cling together and coalesce to form compound ideas. 
Evolution is true — hence to interpret human phe- 
nomena we are referred to the quarrels of the early 
apes. Evolution is true — hence the axioms and forms 
of thought must be formed by the consolidated expe- 
riences of lower forms through an " interminable past." 
Whatever facts do not harmonize with the theory are 



190 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

stigmatized as ex parte, and their testimony is dis- 
credited. There is no fancy or guess too wild or too 
absurd to be greedily swallowed, if only it support 
the great doctrine. And on the other hand, there is 
no fact of nature, no matter how well ascertained ; 
there is no deliverance of consciousness, no matter 
how universal, which has any rights which the phi- 
losopher is bound to respect if it is opposed to his 
belief. And all this is warranted, because evolution 
is true. The evidence brought to prove the theory 
gets all its force as evidence from the assumption 
that the theory is true. It is the most fraternal ar- 
rangement possible — the evidence proves the theory, 
and the theory gives weight to the evidence. Truly, 
all things to him that believeth. A mob of atoms, if 
they should fall to reasoning, could scarcely do better 
than this. 

But, to return to more serious discussion, the great- 
est difficulty of the experience-philosophy has yet to 
be mentioned. To turn sensation into thought, re- 
flection, and consciousness is difficult, but to turn it 
into action is harder still. How to turn passivity 
into activity, how to extract from mere sentiency the 
various forms of conscious effort, has always been a 
great problem. Why should inactive receptivity 
transform itself into the idea and fact of conscious 
power ? 

Mr. Bain, in his work, introduced a novelty into 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 191 

his system for the purpose of answering these ques- 
tions. He postulates a spontaneous activity of the 
muscles as part of the original outfit of the organ- 
ism ; and this spontaneity, reduced to shape by ex- 
perience, explains the difficulty. To this it is suffi- 
cient to say that if this activity is strictly spontane- 
ous, it lies without the physical forces ; and if it does 
not lie without them, it is not spontaneous. In 
either case, Mr. Bain has not thrown much light upon 
the subject. 

Mr. Spencer, however, cuts the knot. There is 
no such thing as spontaneity ; because, if there 
is, his theory fails. This alternative is not to be 
thought of; and hence there is nothing left us but 
to accept Mr. Spencer's statement, that our con- 
sciousness of freedom, of being the causes of our 
actions, is an utter delusion. In reality, every thing 
which we do is done for us ; the sequence of cause 
and effect is as rigid here as it is in physics, and the 
belief that we have any thing to do with our volitions 
is a superstition that deserves no quarter whatever. 
It has long been evident that the psychology of con- 
sciousness, and that of Mr. Spencer, have nothing in 
common ; but, inasmuch as consciousness has no 
rights which the "New Philosophy" is bound to re- 
spect, we can only look tearfully on as one after an- 
other of our primary beliefs is ruthlessly turned out 
of doors. Remonstrance would clearly be useless, 
and might even provoke further indignity. One 



192 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

knows not what extremes of violence might be re- 
sorted to if it should become apparent that we have 
any " pseud-ideas " concealed about our person, to 
say nothing of holding a belief in what Mr. Spencer 
calls " the Hebrew myth." We hold our peace, then, 
while Mr. Spencer explains how the illusion con- 
cerning freedom has arisen : 

" Considered as an internal perception, the illusion 
consists in supposing that at each moment the ego 
is something more than the aggregate of feelings and 
ideas, actual and nascent, which then exists. A man 
who, after being subject to an impulse consisting of 
a group of psychical states, real and ideal, performs 
a certain action, usually asserts that he determined 
to perform the action ; and by speaking of his con- 
scious self as having been something separate from 
the group of psychical states constituting the im- 
pulse, is led into the error of supposing that it was 
not the impulse alone which determined the action. 
But the entire group of psychical states which con- 
stituted the antecedent of the action, also constituted 
himself at that moment — constituted his psychical 
self, that is, as distinguished from his physical self. 
It is alike true that he determined the action, and 
that the aggregate of his feelings and ideas deter- 
mined it ; since, during its existence this aggregate 
constituted his then state of consciousness, that is, 
himself. Either the ego which is supposed to deter- 
mine or will the action, is present in consciousness 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 193 

or it is not. If it is not present in consciousness, it 
is something of which we are unconscious — some- 
thing, therefore, of whose existence we neither have 
nor can have any evidence. If it is present in con- 
sciousness, then, as it is ever present, it can be at 
each moment nothing else than the state of con- 
sciousness, simple or compound, passing at that mo- 
ment. It follows inevitably that when an impression 
received from without makes nascent certain appro- 
priate motor changes, and various, of the feelings and 
ideas which must accompany and follow them ; and 
when, under the stimulus of this composite psychical 
state, the nascent motor changes pass into actual 
motor changes, this composite psychical state which 
excites the action is at the same time the ego which 
is said to will the action." — Vol. i, p. 500. 

This description shows us how the illusion has 
arisen, and on the next page we learn how it has been 
strengthened : 

" This subjective illusion in which the notion of 

free-will commonly originates is strengthened by a 

corresponding objective illusion. The actions of 

other individuals, lacking as they do that uniformity 

characterizing phenomena of which the laws are 

known, appear to be lawless — appear to be under no 

necessity of following any particular order, and are 

hence supposed to be determined by the unknown 

independent something called the will. But this 

seeming indeterminateness in the mental succession 
13 



194 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

is consequent on the extreme complication of the 
forces in action. The composition of causes is so 
intricate, and from moment to moment so varied, 
that the effects are not calculable. These effects, 
however, are as conformable to law as the simplest 
reflex-actions. The irregularity and apparent free- 
dom are inevitable results of the complexity, and 
equally arise in the inorganic world under parallel 
conditions. To amplify an illustration before used : 
A body in space subject to the attraction of a single 
other body moves in a direction that can be accu- 
rately predicted. If subject to the attractions of two 
bodies, its course is but approximately calculable. 
If subject to the attractions of three bodies, its course 
can be calculated with still less precision. And if it 
is surrounded by bodies of all sizes, at all distances, 
its motion will be apparently uninfluenced by any of 
them : it will move in some indefinable varying line 
that appears to be self-determined ; it will seem to be 
freer 

Passing over for the present the boundless nihilism 
in the preceding paragraphs, I remark that this doc- 
trine of necessity is here put into far more explicit 
statement than we commonly find in Mr. Spencer. 
As a rule, his views are rarely expressed in definite 
form, so much so that I know of no other author 
whom it is more difficult to criticise. Leading doc- 
trines are suggested rather than stated, and assumed 
rather than proved ; and the critic is forced to wade 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 195 

through a sea of vague and meaningless analogies, in 
order to reach any precise meaning. But there can 
be no doubt of the meaning of this quotation. Spon- 
taneity, freedom, is a delusion ; and all our effort is 
the result of complex reflex-action. 

It it were needful, it would be easy to criticise Mr. 
Spencer's account of reflex-action ; and to show that, 
in concluding it to be the reality in all seeming self- 
determination, he has once more mistaken the confu- 
sion of a problem for its solution. The truth is, that 
men are automata running about on two legs, with 
the added absurdity of supposing themselves free. A 
book lies before me on the table. I think I can draw it 
toward me or push it from me, or let it alone. I feel 
conscious that I can determine to do or not to do ; to 
do this or to do that. But I am mistaken. If I draw 
that book toward me, it is because I cannot help it. 
If I push it from me, the fact is proof that I could 
not do otherwise. If I let it alone, it is because an 
invincible necessity prevents me from touching it. 
The manner in which the conflict is decided is as 
follows : The idea of a book to be drawn arouses a 
" group of nascent motor changes," the idea of a book 
to be pushed arouses another and opposing " group 
of nascent motor changes," and these two groups 
proceed to fight it out. If the first group wins, the 
book is drawn ; if the second group wins, the book 
is pushed ; if they are equally matched, then, like 
the ass between the bundles of hay, I let the book 



I go Review of Herbert Spencer. 

alone. An insulting word is spoken to a man. The 
physical antecedent is aerial vibrations. These cor- 
relate with nerve-currents, which at once start for some 
superior nerve-center, where an immense amount of 
molecular motion is disengaged. This, in turn, starts 
for the muscles of the arm, taking care " to blow up 
the magazines" of force in the ganglia on its way 
down. The molecular motion on reaching the mus- 
cles quickly becomes mechanical motion ; the mus- 
cles are violently extended in such a way as to reach 
the offender, who is forthwith collared and cuffed, 
and, if the nascent motor changes have so settled the 
matter among themselves, he is also kicked. This is 
the true account of this matter, and of all seeming 
self-determination. One would never have thought 
it if he had not been told ; wherefore for this exten- 
sion of. our knowledge, great thanks are due to Mr. 
Spencer. Consciousness, of course, contradicts the 
philosopher ; but so much the worse for consciousness. 

And lest any one should think that I have mis- 
represented Mr. Spencer for the sake of ridicule, I 
commend to him the following paragraph : 

" When the automatic actions become so involved, 
so varied in kind, and severalty so infrequent, as no 
longer to be performed with unhesitating precision — 
when, after the reception of one of the more complex 
impressions, the appropriate motor changes become 
nascent, but are prevented from passing into imme- 
diate action by the antagonism of certain other nas- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 197 

cent motor changes appropriate to some nearly-allied 
impression, there is constituted a state of conscious- 
ness which, when it finally issues in action, we call 
volition. Each set of nascent motor changes arising 
in the course of this conflict is a weak revival of the 
state of consciousness which accompanies such motor 
changes when actually performed ; is a representa- 
tion of such motor changes as were before executed 
under like circumstances ; is an idea of such motor 
changes. We have, therefore, a conflict between two 
sets of ideal motor changes which severally tend to 
become real, and one of which eventually does be- 
come real ; and this passing of an ideal motor change 
into a real one we distinguish as volition." — Vol. i, 
p. 496. 

There is warrant enough for all that I have said. 
Consciousness has no voice in this matter ; observa- 
tion has no voice in the matter ; fact has no voice in 
the matter — only unproved and unprovable fancies, 
and the sore needs of Mr. Spencer's system, have 
any claim to be heard. This is the logic of the 
cuttle-fish ; this is intellectual soothsaying, and, like 
all soothsaying, can only be received by faith. 

Compare also the following account of reason and 
reasoning : 

" For though when the confusion of a complex 
impression with some allied one causes a confusion 
among the nascent motor excitations, there is en- 
tailed a certain hesitation ; and though this hesitation 



198 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

continues as long as those nascent motor excitations 
or ideas of the correlative actions go on superseding 
one another ; yet, ultimately, some one set of motor 
excitations will prevail over the rest. As the groups 
of antagonistic tendencies aroused will scarcely ever 
be exactly balanced, the strongest group will at 
length pass into action ; and as this sequence will 
usually be the one that has recurred oftenest in ex- 
perience, the action will on the average of cases be 
the one best adapted to the circumstances. But an 
action thus produced is nothing else than a rational 
action." — Vol. i, p. 455. 

I had intended to end the quotation at this point, 
but Mr. Spencer gives such a lucid and convincing 
illustration of this kind of reasoning that we shall 
probably understand it much better if we study the 
example given : 

"A snarling dog commonly turns tail when a stone 
is thrown at him, or even when he sees the stooping 
motion required for picking up a stone. Suppose 
that, having often experienced this sequence, I am 
again attacked by such a dog, what are the resulting 
psychical processes ? The combined impressions 
produced on my senses, and the state of conscious- 
ness which they arouse, have before been followed 
by those motor changes required for picking up and 
throwing a stone, and by those visual changes result- 
ing from the dog's retreat. As these psychical states 
have repeatedly succeeded one another in experience, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 199 

they have acquired some cohesion — there is a tend- 
ency for the psychical states excited in me by the 
snarling dog, to be followed by those other psychical 
states that have before followed them. In other 
words, there is a nascent excitation of the motor 
apparatus concerned in picking up and throwing ; 
there is a nascent excitation of all the sensory nerves 
affected during such acts ; and through these there 
is a nascent excitation of the visual nerves, which on 
previous occasions received the impression of a flying 
dog. That is, I have the ideas of picking up and 
throwing a stone, and of seeing a dog run away — for 
these that we call ideas are nothing else than weak 
repetitions of the psychical states caused by actual im- 
pressions and motions. But what happens further ? 
If there is no antagonist impulse, if no other ideas 
or partial excitations arise, and if the dog's aggressive 
demonstrations produce in me feelings of adequate 
vividness, these partial excitations pass into complete 
excitations. I go through the previously-imagined 
actions. The nascent motor changes become real 
motor changes, and the adjustment of inner to outer 
relations is completed." — Vol. i, p. 455. 

Such is the account of reason ; and it is supposed 
to be a reasonable account. It is one of the boasts 
of this philosophy that it dispenses with scholastic 
doctrine of separate faculties in the soul, and reduces 
instinct, reason, will, etc., to modifications produced 
by the single principle of association. We have just 



200 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

seen how it is done. To reason, is to be dragged off 
by the strongest of several sets of opposing " nascent 
motor changes ; " and to will, is to suffer similar treat- 
ment. To suppose that I have any voice in the 
matter, that I can compare the claims of the oppos- 
ing " nascent motor changes " and decide for myself, 
is an " untenable hypothesis." The nascent motor 
excitations settle the question among themselves ; 
and thus the " adjustment of inner to outer relations 
is completed." They settle the question, too, much 
better than I could ; for Mr. Spencer closes his dis- 
cussion of this topic by saying, " I will only further 
say, freedom of the will, did it exist, would be at vari- 
ance with the beneficence recently displayed in the 
evolution of the correspondence between the organ- 
ism and its environment. . . . There would be a 
retardation of that grand progress which is bearing 
humanity onward to a higher intelligence and a 
nobler character." 

This mechanical way of settling all disputed ques- 
tions recalls the old problem of the ass and the bun- 
dles of hay. If while lying down the nascent motor 
excitations should happen to balance themselves, 
one might lie there forever. If they should do 
this when one is walking, he might go on forever. 
These disastrous consequences are averted, however, 
by two circumstances : first, an exact balance of exci- 
tations is only infinitesimally probable ; and, second, 
the homogeneous is unstable. If, then, the excita- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 201 

tions ever should be in exact balance, the instability 
of the homogeneous would soon bring about a differ- 
entiation of the homogeneous groups of the nascent 
motor excitations, whereby the inequality of power, 
resulting from the heterogeneity necessarily produced, 
would forthwith settle the difficulty in favor of that 
set of nascent motor changes which would be best 
calculated to produce an adjustment of inner to outer 
relations, or to maintain the necessary equilibrium 
between the organic and its environment. It would, 
indeed, be far easier to allow the man to start and 
stop himself, but it would not be half so scientific ; 
and, besides, there -would be an interference with 
" that grand progress which is bearing humanity 
onward toward a higher intelligence and a nobler 
character." 

How Mr. Spencer would apply this formula 
to the abstract reasonings of the mathematician, 
scientist, or philosopher, does not appear. What 
kind of nascent motor excitation precedes the con- 
clusion that the square on the hypothenuse is equal 
to the sum of the squares on the other two sides ? or 
that central forces vary inversely as the square of 
the distance ? What nascent motor excitations fight 
over the nominalistic controversy ? What nascent 
motor excitations discuss the nature of magnetism, 
and the polarization of light ? We cannot hope for 
an answer to any of these questions from either 
consciousness or observation ; doubtless, however, 



202 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

Mr. Spencer's prolific imagination is fully equal to 
the occasion. For the present, we must rest content 
with knowing that all the abstractions of science 
and philosophy, and all our voluntary actions, are 
the necessary resultants of conflicting nascent motor 
excitations. 

A very few words will suffice to show the utter 
inconsistency of this necessitarian system. Even if 
it were not emphatically denied by every man's con- 
sciousness, even if it were not totally unsupported by 
a single fact, still this scheme of necessity is utterly 
self-destructive. Mr. Spencer believes in a universal 
and ever-active force ; where does he get the idea ? 
The veriest tyro in metaphysics now admits that force 
is not an observed fact, but a mental datum. It is 
only as we ourselves put forth effort, that a belief in 
external power arises. Our own effort, -our own con- 
scious self-determination, stands for the type of all 
power. We have no other knowledge nor hint of 
force than that derived from our own free volitions. 
If they play us false, all that is built upon them 
is baseless. Deny internal causation, and external 
causation disappears along with it, and a universe 
of unconnected phenomena is all that is left us. Yet 
Mr. Spencer, after obtaining the belief in external 
causation from the fact of internal causation, next 
proceeds to deny the fact on which the belief rests, 
and asks us still to accept the belief. It is hard to 
resist this appeal ; for if the belief is not accepted, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 203 

Mr. Spencer's system has no power to work with ; 
and if the internal fact is not rejected, the system 
breaks down. And this is science ; this is logic ; 
this is evolution. It is hard to believe that Mr. Spen- 
cer is really serious. Is it not possible that this work 
is meant only as an elaborate satire upon the loose 
reasoning and baseless assumptions of much that calls 
itself science ? The internal evidence in favor of 
this view is complete ; while the opposing theory, that 
it is meant as a sober exposition of fact, is beset with in- 
surmountable difficulties — it is positively incredible. 
We wait for Mr. Spencer's announcement that all 
this time he has been perpetrating a tremendous 
sarcasm. The air of gravity and reality with which 
the work has been invested, the pains with which it 
has been elaborated, the wide range of illustration, all 
will serve to raise it at once to the foremost place in 
the realm of satirical literature. It is to be hoped, 
for the sake of his own reputation, that Mr. Spencer 
will not keep the secret much longer. 

Sensational philosophy has never been able to 
escape nihilism. I have already shown that Mr. 
Spencer's doctrine of the unknowable can logic- 
ally result only in idealism ; it remains to show 
that the logical necessity of the experience-phi- 
losophy is nihilism. In its zeal to deny the existence 
of a knowing power which takes direct cognizance 
of externa] being, it has been forced to build up both 



204 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the mind and the external world, from the raw mate- 
rial of sensation. There is sensation, according to 
this doctrine, long before there is knowledge ; and 
the final recognition of self and of an external world, 
is the residuum of countless sensations. But if this 
be so, then the deposit which is named self, has at 
least as good claim to substantial being as the deposit 
which represents the outer world. It is logically im- 
possible to accept one and reject the other ; and, in 
the attempt to do this, materialism has always tum- 
bled into the bottomless pit of nothingness. Mr. Mill 
makes matter an affection of mind, and mind a prod- 
uct of matter. Both are denied substantial exist- 
ence, and both go off into the void. Mr. Bain reduces 
mind to nerve-currents, and then says that nerve- 
currents and the outer world generally have only a 
hypothetical existence — indeed, are but " abstract 
names for our sensations and exist only in the mind 
that frames them."* But inasmuch as nerve-currents 
are abstractions, the mind, which is the product of 
nerve-currents, is doubly an abstraction ; and substan- 
tial existence disappears in the abysses. Mr. Spencer 
is in the true succession. He makes a desperate at- 
tempt, indeed, to save the world ; but in his execution 
of self, or the ego, he handles the ax so awkwardly as 
to dispatch subject and object together. This is the 
historical stone which kills the two birds : " Either 
this ego, which is supposed to determine or will the 
* " Science and Intellect," p, 376, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 205 

act, is present in consciousness or it is not. If it is 
not present in consciousness, it is something of which 
we are unconscious — something, therefore, of whose 
existence we neither have nor can have any evidence. 
If it is present in consciousness, then, as it is ever 
present, it can be at each moment nothing else than 
the state of consciousness, simple or compound, pass- 
ing at the moment." — Vol. i, p. 500. 

Whenever Mr. Spencer becomes epigrammatic, he 
is apt to use arguments which cut both ways. I 
have always had some secret doubts about the pecul- 
iar feats of the Australian boomerang ; and have 
quietly determined if I ever got hold of one, to prac- 
tice a little with it, before yielding implicit credence 
to the stories one hears. But here is the clearest 
proof that boomerang arguments are possible. Let 
us apply this argument to the existence of the un- 
knowable, and see how it lights on Mr. Spencer's own 
head. I manage the reasoning in this way : Either 
this unknowable, which is said to underlie phenomena, 
is present in consciousness or it is not. If it is not 
present, then it is something of which we are uncon- 
scious — something, therefore, of whose existence we 
neither have nor can have any evidence. If it is 
present in consciousness, it clearly cannot be unknow- 
able, for that would involve the contradiction of sup- 
posing that a thing can be at the same time known 
and unknowable. In either case we must conclude 
that the unknowable is something of whose exist- 



206 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ence we neither have nor can have any evidence. 
My reasoning is as good as Mr. Spencer's. If he 
insists that we cannot think of phenomena without a 
substantial support, I reply that it is equally impos- 
sible to think of feelings without a substantial sup- 
port. If the argument is good for one, it is good for 
both, and that, too, in whichever way it is taken. 

But, says Mr. Spencer again and again, this argu- 
ment of mine reduces to nonsense without the postu- 
late of external existence. Undoubtedly ; and it 
reduces to equal nonsense without the postulate of 
internal existence. But, he says, the terms used sup- 
pose objective existence. They do, indeed ; but no 
more strongly than feeling and thought and conscious- 
ness suppose subjective existence. The argument 
which reduces mind to a string of feelings, reduces 
matter to a bundle of qualities. If subjective exist- 
ence has no warrant, objective existence has none 
also ; and the void and formless nothing is all that is 
left us. But Mr. Spencer calls the " Universal Postu- 
late " to his aid. This is, that we cannot help believ- 
ing in an outer world, and so must accept it whether we 
can justify the belief or not. But the " Postulate " 
is another boomerang. We cannot help believing in 
an inner world — in the reality and identity of self, 
and in our self-determining power ; and on the au- 
thority of the " Postulate," we must, therefore, con- 
clude that this belief stands for a fact. It clearly will 
not do to be too free with the " Postulate." If it could 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 207 

be smuggled in at the back door, and be persuaded 
to affix the seal of reality to the outer world, and 
could then be kicked out before any further claims 
could be made upon it, it might do to send for it ; but 
if it is to be free to all parties, it will be as likely to 
blaspheme as to bless. There is no help for it. Mr. 
Spencer's solid-looking sensational ground vanishes 
from under his feet, and leaves him in the abysses. 

The loftiest tumbling, however, of the experience- 
philosophy has probably been done over the intui- 
tions. All our mental operations proceed upon cer- 
tain assumptions. All reasoning, even that of the 
skeptic, necessarily proceeds in logical forms, and 
assumes the validity of logical laws. The argument 
brought to overthrow them implicitly assumes them, 
and owes all its value to the assumption. It were 
easier to escape from one's shadow, or for a bird to 
outsoar the supporting air, than for reason to escape 
from the dominion of logical laws. The law of 
causation, too, is the necessary postulate of all sci- 
ence, and the one which alone makes science possible. 
The transcendental philosopher assumes that these 
data are contributed by the mind itself ; that, though 
not prior to experience, they do not derive their 
validity from it, but are intuitively known to be true. 
It is not taught that these are explicitly present, but 
only implicitly so, in every mental operation. The 
savage, the rustic, or the child, probably knows as lit- 



208 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

tie about intuitions, logical laws, or thought-forms, as 
he does about the doctrine of evolution itself ; yet 
each one implicitly proceeds upon them. 

Now these constant assumptions of all reasoning 
the transcendentalist calls the intuitions ; and claims 
that they are not generalizations from experience, but 
are based upon direct mental insight. There must be, 
indeed, a certain amount of experience to make the 
terms of the proposition intelligible. If we should 
inquire of a child three years old whether two straight 
lines can inclose a space, or whether it is not pos- 
sible that events can happen without a cause, we 
should probably get no very satisfactory answer, 
because the terms of the propositions would be ut- 
terly unintelligible to him. But when the terms can 
be understood, when the conception of straight lines 
and inclosed spaces can be formed, then the mind 
needs no further experience to know that two 
straight lines can never inclose a space. We are 
just as sure of the fact as we would be if we had 
followed them to the frontiers of the infinite. When 
there is sufficient mental development to follow a 
geometrical demonstration, we reach a certainty 
which no further experience can confirm or shake. 
Indeed, we make the mental conception the regula- 
tor of experience, and not conversely. So, too, 
when the doctrine of causation becomes intelligible, 
that moment it is perceived to be real. 

This, then, is the doctrine of the intuitions. The 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 209 

mind has the power of knowing some things to be true, 
without any process of verification. These are the 
intuitions ; and the claim for them is,that, as soon as the 
propositions which express them become intelligible, 
they are seen to be necessarily and universally true. 
For their truth, they are independent of experience ; 
while they alone give to experience any form or 
meaning. They are the laws which transform the 
chaos of unconnected experience into a creation of 
orderly thought. This is the only doctrine which 
corresponds with our matured consciousness. 

This doctrine, however, the experience-philos- 
opher is, of course, bound to deny. These laws of 
thinking are in his view, like every thing else in 
the mind, but consolidated sensations ; and, in the 
lack of evidence, the philosopher plunges into dark- 
ness of the unknown, and gropes about for oppos- 
ing possibilities which can never be brought to 
a test. Both Mr. Spencer and Mr. Mill assure 
us that the assumed necessity of these beliefs is 
only the result of habit. Even the simplest math- 
ematical axioms are, according to Mr. Mill, the 
results of inveterate associations ; and he gravely 
suggests that if our training had been different, 
we might have looked upon their contradictories 
as equally axiomatic. Mr. Spencer tells us that 
"where a relation has been perpetually repeated in 
our experience with absolute uniformity, we are 

entirely disabled from conceiving the negation of 
14 



210 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

it." This is the origin of all our a priori beliefs. 
" Being the constant and infinitely-repeated elements 
of thought, they must become the automatic ele- 
ments of thought — the elements of thought which it 
is impossible to get rid of — the 'forms of intuition."' 
Before pointing out the skeptical consequences of 
this teaching, I notice a novelty which Mr. Spencer 
has introduced into the discussion. The sensational 
doctrine, hitherto, has been greatly pressed for time in 
which to work its transformations. It is not claimed 
that these wonders have been wrought within the scope 
of our present consciousness ; it has been necessary 
therefore to do the work in infancy, and to complete 
it also before the critical faculties make their ap- 
pearance. It has always required great sleight-of- 
hand to complete and polish a full set of mental 
furniture in the limited time allowed. Besides, too, 
the slightest observation shows that every individual 
brings with him tendencies which determine both 
the line, and the measure, of his development ; and 
these tendencies, so far as they go, are transcend- 
ental elements in his mental character. The fact 
is undeniable that, both physically and mentally,, we 
are determined more by our constitution than by 
our own experience. The fact of transmitted tend- 
encies has become so prominent, that the philos- 
opher who attempts to deduce every thing from 
individual experience finds the ground slipping from 
under his feet. The transcendental, forces its way 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 2 1 1 

into individual experience ; and when once it gets 
in, who can tell where it will stop ? 

In this sad strait of the doctrine, Mr. Spencer ap- 
pears with a saving suggestion, and the eagerness with 
which it has been adopted serves to show into what 
sore need the philosophy had fallen. Mr. Spencer 
suggests that these intuitions are transcendental for 
the individual, but empirical for the race. He, too, 
would derive every thing from experience, but from a 
race-experience. To the experience-hypothesis as 
commonly understood, he shows no quarter what- 
ever. " If at birth there exists nothing but a passive 
receptivity of impressions, why is not a horse as 
educable as a man ? Should it be said that language 
makes the difference, then why do not the cat and 
the dog, reared in the same household, arrive at 
equal degrees and kinds of intelligence ? " " Those 
who contend that knowledge results wholly from the 
experiences of the individual, ignoring as they do 
the mental development which accompanies the 
autogenous development of the nervous system, fall 
into' an error as great as if they were to ascribe all 
bodily growth and structure to exercise, forgetting 
the innate tendency to assume the adult form. . . . 
Doubtless, experiences received by the individual fur- 
nish the concrete materials for all thought. Doubt- 
less, the organized and semi-organized arrangements 
existing among the cerebral nerves can give no 
knowledge until there has been a presentation of the 



212 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

external relations to which they correspond. And 
doubtless, the child's daily observations and reason- 
ings aid the formation of those involved nervous 
connections that are in process of spontaneous evo- 
lution, just as its daily gambols aid the development 
of its limbs. But saying this is quite a different 
thing from saying that its intelligence is wholly 
produced by its experiences. That is an utterly 
inadmissible doctrine — a doctrine which makes the 
presence of a brain meaningless ; a doctrine which 
makes idiotcy unaccountable." — Vol. i, p. 470. 

We have classical authority for believing that it is 
lawful to be taught even by an enemy ; wherefore, we 
must thank Mr. Spencer for his conclusive showing 
that the current form of the experience-hypothesis is 
utterly untenable. And now for his own doctrine : 
" But these pre-determined internal relations, though 
independent of the experiences of the individual, are 
not independent of experiences in general ; they 
have been determined by the experiences of pre- 
ceding organisms. The corollary here drawn from 
the general argument is, that the human brain is an 
organized register of infinitely numerous experiences 
received during the evolution of life, or rather during 
the evolution of that series of organisms through 
which the human organism has been reached. The 
effects of the most uniform and frequent of these 
experiences have been successively bequeathed, prin- 
cipal and interest, and have slowly amounted to that 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 2 r 3 

high intelligence which lies latent in the brain of the 
infant, which the infant in after-life exercises, and 
perhaps strengthens or further complicates, and 
which, with minute additions, it bequeaths to future 
generations." — Vol. i, p. 470. 

It is evident that Mr. Spencer has greatly in- 
creased the resources of his school by this suggestion. 
It greatly extends the time, and, besides, gives fine 
opportunities for logical mountebankery. Viewed 
through the gloom of the unknown, sleight-of-hand 
may pass for a real miracle ; and acrobatic feats 
which, upon close examination, betray only the com- 
mon clown, might, when invested with the haze of 
distance, seem like the magic movements of a great 
enchanter. But clear as it is that Mr. Spencer has 
increased the resources of his school by his sugges- 
tion, it is not so clear that he has any logical right 
to it. For what is it but an admission that unless 
evolution be assumed as a fact, it cannot possibly be 
proved ? This it is, and nothing more. If the evolu- 
tionists can get much comfort out of the admission, 
they are welcome to it. 

Another difficulty meets us. Experience alone, 
can teach nothing. It is only as there is a mind 
with an outfit of principles to organize experience, 
that we can advance a single step. Facts alone, are 
dead ; and can tell us nothing of other facts except we 
assume the reality of causation, and the validity of 
logical laws. Otherwise the syllogism begs the ques- 



214 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

tion, and the induction concludes from particulars to 
a universal. Argument in either form, is illogical, 
unless the mind is allowed to contribute its meta- 
physical data. In this way alone can the dead ma- 
terials of experience be put in motion, and a living 
advance be secured. The fabric of knowledge falls 
into indistinguishable chaos, except as supported by 
the forms of thought and logic. Whence I submit 
that, instead of organizing thought-forms from expe- 
rience, we must postulate thought-forms at the start 
to give experience any form or meaning. 

Another consequence must be noticed. If sensa- 
tion is the raw material out of which mind has been 
built up, if it is the only source of knowledge, then 
whatever is not in sensation has no claim to reality. 
All the higher powers and beliefs of the mind, which 
differ in kind from sensation, must be looked upon 
as impostors who, having forgotten their ignoble 
birth, set up a claim to the throne. The existence 
and infinity of space and time, the belief in causation, 
the axioms of mathematics, and the universal validity 
of logical processes, these doctrines have no claim to 
belief whatever. They are not found in sensation, 
and bear no resemblance to it ; and as this is the 
only legitimate source of knowledge, these pretenders 
must be banished from the realm of knowledge. If. 
I repeat, this doctrine be strictly true, we know what 
we have experienced, and we know absolutely noth- 
ing more. Of course, finite experience cannot teach 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 2 1 5 

universal truth, and the so-called intuitions must be 
reduced to the scale of experience. As a necessary 
result, science disappears ; and the great doctrine of 
evolution, which postulates the universal validity of 
the laws of thought, disappears along with it. In- 
deed, not even a limited objective validity can be 
attributed to these laws ; for the doctrine is that they 
are the result of habit, and derive all their necessity 
from inveterate association. They represent, then, 
no external facts, but only internal delusions. In the 
dissolving chemistry of this doctrine, the subjective 
world disappears, the objective world also disappears, 
and all that is left is a limitless void ; nay, not even 
that is left. All that remains of the universe is a 
jumble of qualities which are qualities pi nothing, 
and a string of feelings which belong to nobody. 

To this fatal inference Mr. Spencer has nought 
but the following brief reply : " In spite of logical 
objections we cannot help trusting these intuitions, 
and this is our highest warrant for belief in any thing." 
But by his own principles our subjective inability to 
get rid of these intuitions, is no proof of their ob- 
jective validity. The inability results entirely from 
habit. If we had formed other habits we should have 
thought otherwise. Besides, Mr. Spencer is the last 
man who should appeal to our necessary beliefs in 
support of any thing, for no one has done them 
greater violence. We have already seen how he in- 
sists upon the duality of subject and object as the 



216 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

most fundamental datum of thought, and one which 
it is impossible for us to transcend ; yet, in spite of 
the impossibility, Mr. Spencer declares them one. 
He further insists that no effort will enable us to 
think of thought and motion as alike ; yet he assumes 
as a first principle, that they are identical. We inev- 
itably believe that personality is more than a bundle 
of feelings ; but Mr. Spencer turns this belief out of 
doors without ceremony. We cannot help thinking 
that we see things as they are, that the qualities we 
attribute to them are really in them ; but this belief, 
too, Mr. Spencer cannot abide. We cannot help 
thinking that we are free, but this also is a " pseud- 
idea." There is scarcely a deliverance of our mature 
consciousness which Mr. Spencer has not insulted 
and denied. However, something must be saved in 
the midst of this universal denial, or the universe 
would vanish in the abyss of nihilism ; and, accord- 
ingly, Mr. Spencer asks us to grant him objective 
existence, and an infinite force, on the sole testimony 
of the same mind which he has loaded with opprobri- 
um as a false witness. He insists upon these things, 
because he cannot even start his system without 
them ; he denies all the rest, because they are hostile 
to his system. Can any thing be more convenient 
than this privilege of taking what we like and reject- 
ing what we like ? Who could not build up a sys- 
tem if we would indulge in this little thing? We 
cannot grant it, however. The elementary affirma- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 217 

tions of the mind must stand or fall together, for no 
one has any better warrant than the rest. Doubt- 
less, the exigencies of his system may seem sufficient 
reason to Mr. Spencer for accepting some and reject- 
ing others ; but they will hardly seem so to those 
whose interest in the great doctrine is less paternal. 
Now what shall we say of this theory ? Has it not 
failed at every point indicated in opening the discus- 
sion ? Even permitting it to ransack imagination for 
its arguments and its facts, it utterly breaks down. 
And the purpose of all this subtle misconstruction of 
our experience, of this labored denial of what we 
know, of these fanciful guesses at the unknown, is 
only to escape from the necessity of admitting that, 
back of nerves and muscles, there is a knowing, self- 
active mind. To accomplish this purpose, incon- 
ceivabilities are postulated, irrationalities are multi- 
plied, consciousness is insulted, and logic is outraged. 
They have their revenge. Mr. Spencer repudiates 
reason and consciousness ; and they repudiate Mr. 
Spencer. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE THEISTIC ARGUMENT. 

' | ''HE study of nature has effected, within a few 
-*- years, a complete change in our conception of 
the physical universe. Whether we consider it as 
extended in space and time, or as the subject of law, 
as a supreme order, it is equally apparent that the 
earlier view had nothing in common with the con- 
ception of to-day. In space, the blue vault and crys- 
tal floors have broken up and passed away. We no 
longer argue, with Lucretius, that the sun cannot 
possibly be more than a foot in diameter ; nor do we 
now think of the stars as holes in the floor of heaven, 
through which beams the upper glory. The astron- 
omer has come back from the depths of infinite space, 
with wondrous stories of the suns that glow and 
systems that circle there. At his bidding, we have 
learned to view those twinkling points of light as 
suns, which, though small through distance, do yet 
blaze, many of them with the force of thousands of 
suns like ours. All terrestrial units, of either size or 
distance, fail to measure the quantities with which 
he deals. When he attempts to weigh the stars, he 
rolls the earth into the scales as his pound-weight ; 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 219 

but soon he has to roll in so many, to secure a bal- 
ance, that imagination is outrun. To measure his 
distances, he first tries the sun's distance, as a unit, 
but quickly finds it inapplicable. Next he tries the 
speed of light, as a unit, and measures distances by 
the time light spends in crossing them ; but this, 
too, soon leaves imagination dizzy and powerless. 
The rays which reached our earth last night from 
the pole-star, started forty-six years ago. Rays 
which started from more distant orbs, when the 
Roman empire was young, or when Leonidas and 
his Spartans were making history, are still upon 
their way. Since light left some of the outlying 
pickets of the celestial host, the entire drama 
of human history has been enacted. Civilizations 
have come and gone. Empires have risen and de- 
cayed. Homer has sung, Plato has speculated, and 
Socrates has nobly died. But the light which left its 
distant home when human history was still far down 
the future, has not yet accomplished half its way. 
The sphere of telescopic vision has a diameter of 
seven millions of years as the light flies ; and could 
the heavens above us be blotted out to-night, we 
should continue to receive light for thousands of 
years to come. Swift-footed as the messenger is, 
earth would grow old and gray before it learned the 
occurrence of the catastrophe. Such are some of the 
facts by which the astronomer seeks to illustrate the 
extent of the universe in space and time. 



220 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

If from astronomy we turn to geology, we learn 
the same lesson. The idea of a creation instantane- 
ously perfected is fading from the minds of men ; 
much more the thought that it took place but six 
thousand years ago. Earth is written all over with 
the marks of a more ancient birth. The very pav- 
ing-stones beneath our feet have in them the rustle 
of ancient woods and the wash of primeval seas. 
The slow, cyclic changes which have fitted up our 
earth for human habitation, demand years by the 
million for every day of creation's week, and give a 
mushroom air to the oldest human monuments. We 
cannot, indeed, assume nature's flowing differential 
to be exactly constant ; yet, when all allowance has 
been made for its variation, it is still beyond ques- 
tion that the integrated function cannot be expressed 
in years. 

Still more clearly is this seen if we listen again 
to the astronomer as he tells of a time when our 
earth itself, with its granite pillars and everlasting 
hills, was but a morning-mist of creation, which 
spun and wove until the pattern of creation stood 
complete. And hence creation is coming to be 
viewed as an evolving rather than an event ; as a 
process demanding the roll of indefinite years ; as 
being, what the Bible calls it, a genesis, that is, a 
birth, with the necessarily accompanying ideas of 
long time, and deferred perfection. The conception 
of sudden bursts of creative power from without, is 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 221 

changing for the conception of an orderly and con- 
stant development from within. Yet this stupen- 
dous chronometry of geology and astronomy reveals 
no trace of a lonely God. Though we go back until 
the sky comes down to the hills, and imagination 
will go no further, we find nature's forces toiling as 
busily as now. 

But still more astonishing than its vast extent and 
indefinite duration, is the profound order which the 
universe displays. The disorderly mob of appear- 
ances, which formed the content of the earlier con- 
ception, has disclosed its uniformities, and the won- 
der grows every day. The whole drove of invisibles 
which filled the early imagination, and engineered 
the machinery of nature, has been relieved from fur- 
ther duty ; and their places have been assumed by 
the steady laws — laws whose control the atom cannot 
escape, and the system cannot defy. The belief in 
an unbroken chain of cause and effect throughout 
all nature, is growing constantly ; and science is dis- 
closing as never before the continuity of nature, from 
the lowest to the highest forms. Many breaks in 
the chain have been insisted upon, but one by one 
these are filling up, and grassing over. And such 
hold has this fact of order and continuity taken upon 
the scientific imagination, that very many scientists 
profess themselves unable to think that it ever has 
been broken, and others will not so much as listen to 
2- doctrine which involves the supernatural. What- 



222 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ever seems chaotic has a hidden order ; whatever 
seems discordant has a secret harmony. Wait a little, 
and both the order and harmony will be disclosed. 

But, while the effect of scientific study has been to 
magnify the extent and wonder of creation, it has 
also served to weaken faith in the existence of a 
Creator. Never was nature so harmonious to the 
conception of a superintending mind ; and, perhaps, 
the absence of that mind was never more suspected. 
Never was the universe so fit to be a manifestation 
of the eternal all-wise God as it is to-day ; and, from 
a scientific stand-point, never was faith more weak. 
A study of the Creator's methods has awakened 
doubts of his existence ; and the discovery that the 
work is infinitely more wonderful than we had been 
taught to believe, warrants the conclusion that there 
is no worker. It would seem, at first sight, as if 
theism ought to find its strongest advocates among 
the students of science ; but it is a fact that, from 
the time of Anaxagoras, scientific study has had a 
tendency to embarrass belief. Atheism might seem 
excusable in the student of history or social science ; 
for to him, as to Macbeth, life must often seem 

" A tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing." 

But atheism begins not with him. Indeed, belief 
and trust are generally strongest among those best 
acquainted with the despair-provoking facts of his- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 223 

tory. It is the student of science, the man best 
acquainted with nature's calm uniformity, with its 
stupendous powers, and the ineffable perfection of 
its mechanism ; it is this man who, though sur- 
rounded by the choicest tokens of a Divine wisdom, 
first learns to suspect the absence of the Eternal Mind. 
It must be, then, that science has made some new 
discovery which renders less imperative the need of 
a guiding intelligence. If the argument from the 
universe to God were ever true, it must be truer 
now than ever. If the narrow heavens upon which 
the Psalmist looked out, declared the glory of God, 
much more must the boundless cosmos of to T day. 
But since the heavens, to use the words of Comte, 
no longer declare the glory of God, but the glory of 
Newton, La Place, and Lagrange, we must conclude 
that the theistic argument was never true ; and that 
science has found, in a deeper knowledge of matter 
and force, a complete explanation of the universe. 
The question, then, which I wish to discuss is, wheth- 
er there is any thing in the established theories and 
observed facts of science to warrant this wide-spread 
skepticism ; or whether this revived atheism, so far 
as it is not the child of desire, is not due to an in- 
complete analysis of scientific teaching, and to con- 
fused and contradictory notions of force and causa- 
tion. Science, of course, abhors metaphysics ; but I 
suspect we shall find some bad metaphysics at the 
bottom of the atheistic argument. 



224 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

In opening the argument let us get the case clear- 
ly before us. It is universally admitted that nature 
seems to be the work of intelligence. Inductive 
science in general proceeds implicitly upon the pos- 
tulate that the reasonable and the natural are one ; 
and without the assumption of this identity, science 
would be impossible. No scientific man ever dreams 
of proposing a system or hypothesis which is clearly 
seen to be unreasonable ; and of two hypotheses we 
cannot help preferring the most simple, direct, and 
rational. Who could accept the cumbrous Ptolemaic 
system, after the simpler and more rational one of 
Newton had been discovered? Even if the former 
were so aided by cycle and epicycle as to account 
for all the motions of the planets, it could not be 
held in the presence of its simpler rival. The detec- 
tion of any theory as cumbrous and needlessly indi- 
rect, seals its doom. When we make such a dis- 
covery, we do not, like the Spanish astronomer, think 
that we could have given good advice if we had been 
consulted at creation ; but we do begin to abandon 
the theory. 

And yet, why abandon it ? Why should nature be 
symmetrical and harmonious to our reason ? Why 
should the methods of nature be also the methods 
of thought? Why should not nature be the un- 
reasonable and discordant ? Why should we take 
our feeling of fitness, of simplicity, of harmony, as a 
standard by which to judge the external world ? It 



Revieiv of Herbert Spencer. 225 

is clear that if we cannot do so, science becomes im- 
possible ; but why should not science be impossible ? 
It is plainly an implicit postulate of all induction 
that the natural and the rational are one. Nature 
presents us with no laws, but only with disconnected 
individuals. The intellect is the crucible in which 
the many are fused into one. The order of nature 
is a thought-order, which was first born in the mind 
as an hypothesis, and afterward verified by experi- 
ment and observation. And this agreement of the 
order of our thought with the procedure of external 
nature is utterly unintelligible, unless nature is in- 
formed with a reason other than ours. 

Again, it is admitted that nature cannot be ex- 
plained, or even described, without assuming the 
presence of purpose therein. Even in the inorganic 
world, we find a multitude of adaptations which, upon 
the assumption of purpose, become luminous and 
intelligible, but which are totally unaccounted for 
upon any other supposition. Without the law of 
chemical equivalence and proportion, nature would 
be an irredeemable chaos. With it, through all the 
myriad changes which force is constantly working, 
the same chemical compounds remain. If they are 
resolved into their elements, they return to the orig- 
inal combination, instead of forming new and strange 
compounds. The operation of this law moved Fara- 
day to profound admiration. He says : " There are 

different elements with the most manifold powers 
15 



226 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

and the most opposed tendencies. Some are so lazy 
and inert, that a superficial observer would take them 
for nothing in the grand resultant of powers ; and 
others, on the contrary, possess such violent proper- 
ties that they seem to threaten the stability of the 
universe. But upon a deeper examination of the 
same, and a consideration of the role which they play, 
one finds that they agree with one another in a great 
scheme of harmonic adaptation. The power of no 
single element could be changed without at once 
destroying the harmonious balance, and plunging 
the world into ruin." Except this law had been im- 
posed upon matter chaos must have remained chaos 
forever. If we look upon it as the result of purpose, 
the mind rests satisfied ; if we do not, there is no 
answer except the positivistic utterance : The law 
exists, and that is all we can know about it. 

The relation of the soil to plant-life, and mediately 
to animal-life, is another fact which becomes intelli- 
gible upon the assumption of purpose in nature, but 
is utterly incomprehensible without it. Of this rela- 
tion Liebig says : 

" There is in chemistry no more wonderful appear- 
ance, none which more confounds all human wisdom, 
than that shown in the adaptation of the soil to plant- 
growth. Through the simplest experiments every 
one can convince himself that, in filtering rain-water 
through soil, it dissolves no trace of potash, ammonia, 
silicic acid, phosphoric acid, as it otherwise does ; 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 227 

and that, much more, the earth gives no part of the 
plant-food which it contains to the water. The most 
continuous rain is unable, except by mechanical 
washing, to deprive it of any of the chief conditions 
of its fertility. And the soil not only holds fast what 
it possesses, but if rain, or other water which holds 
ammonia, potash, phosphoric, and silicic acid in solu- 
tion, is mixed with earth, they are almost instantly 
taken up by it. And only such materials are en- 
tirely withdrawn from the water as are indispensable 
to plant-nutrition ; the others are entirely, or for the 
most part, unaffected." * 

Here is another law, and one scarcely less wide- 
reaching than that of chemical equivalence. If we 
suppose it to be the result of purpose, if we suppose 
it to have been imposed upon matter that plants and 
animals might live, the mind is satisfied. A suffi- 
cient reason for the fact has been found, and a suffi- 
cient explanation has been given. But if we reject 
this explanation, as in the case of the chemical law, 
no account whatever of the fact is possible ; and we 
must fall back once more on positivism, and content 
ourselves with the affirmation of the fact, and attempt 
no explanation. ■ 

The peculiar action of heat with relation to trans- 
parent media is another fact of even greater impor- 
tance than the one just mentioned. Heat of high 
tension has vastly greater penetrative power than 

* Chem., Brief, vol. ii, p. 261. 



228 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

heat of low tension. The result is, that the heat 
from the sun passes with little obstruction through 
our atmosphere, and delivers its warmth upon the 
earth. But in so doing it loses tension, and is en- 
tirely unable to pass through atmosphere into space 
again. The air lets it in, but will not let it out. 
Upon this fact alone rests the possibility of maintain- 
ing the temperature which organic needs make im- 
perative. The fact is explained if we consider it as 
the result of purpose ; otherwise, it remains unex- 
plained and unexplainable. The same general adap- 
tation is also seen in the reciprocal action of the 
plant and animal kingdoms, and in the relation of the 
sea and land. Physical geography proves that a 
slight change in the mutual adjustment of land and 
water, would be sufficient to destroy the present 
harmony of the organic world. Passing to organic 
existence, the evidences of plan and purpose accumu- 
late so rapidly, and are so strong withal, that the 
most skeptical as to final causes cannot avoid using 
the language of contrivance. Scientific men assume 
it as an axiom that every organ has its purpose and 
balanced function ; and whole sciences, as compara- 
tive anatomy, are built upon the assumption. Cuvier 
finds a bone, and reasoning upon the principle of 
adaptation and fitness, proceeds to construct the 
animal to which it belonged. Finally the complete 
skeleton itself is found, and the prophecy of the 
philosopher accords with the fact of nature. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 229 

Perhaps no one has used the language of con- 
trivance more freely than Mr. Darwin himself. He 
denies the fact, to be sure ; but he cannot avoid using 
the language. 

Mr. Huxley, too, in speaking of the development 
of a salamander from the Qgg, says : " After watching 
the process, hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily 
possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid 
to vision than an achromatic would show the hidden 
artist, with his plan before him, striving with skill- 
ful manipulation to perfect his work." At every 
unguarded minute, the most cautious and skeptical 
naturalists fall into the very error they so vigorously 
denounce. 

Let us now collect the results at which we have 
arrived. It is admitted by all — it is not even ques- 
tioned by any — that nature is more harmonious to the 
conception of a guiding mind than to any other 
scientific view. It is admitted, too, that the evidence 
of purpose is so strong that not even the most skep- 
tical can avoid assuming it ; and if he is to speak in- 
telligibly about nature, he must assume it. It is also 
admitted that science, even while denying that nature 
is the work of reason, must still assume as a necessary 
postulate that nature is reasonable, that its methods 
correspond to those of a rational mind. It is further 
admitted, that no explanation at all is possible of 
many most purpose-like laws and facts of nature, ex- 
cept upon the assumption that they do indeed repre- 



230 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

sent the fulfillment .of a plan or purpose. In short, it 
is admitted that, assuming contrivance and purpose 
in nature, the universe becomes luminous and har- 
monious ; and, denying it, the universe remains an 
incomprehensible enigma. It is plain, then, that as 
a scientific hypothesis the theistic conception has 
infinitely the advantage over all others. The uni- 
versal scientific method is to adopt that theory which 
best explains the facts. The vibratory theory of 
light and heat explains more phenomena than the 
emission theory, and owes its acceptance entirely to 
this fact. If any other theory should ever be pro- 
posed which would better explain the facts, it would 
in turn be received. 

Now, in offering the hypothesis of intelligent 
Creator as the explanation of the universe, we are 
not proposing any strange theory. We are only 
extending to the working of the world, the law 
which we know holds in our own conscious ac- 
tions ; and there is nothing whatever in such a con- 
ception which is at variance with just scientific 
methods. If, now, we apply the accustomed reason- 
ing of science to this question, the decision is sure. 
The hypothesis of a living God is admitted by every 
one to be all-sufficient to explain the universe, while 
all others are allowed to be full of breaks which, in 
the present state of science, are simply impassable. 
If, then, we are to reason scientifically, we must ac- 
cept the theistic doctrine. To appeal from it on the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 231 

authority of possible future discoveries, is to adopt a 
principle of reasoning which would make all scientific 
truth impossible. If a disciple of the Ptolemaic as- 
tronomy should object against the Copernican sys- 
tem : It is, indeed, much simpler and more rational 
than my own ; it gives a far more comprehensive 
explanation of the facts than mine does ; I admit all 
that. I admit, too, that my system gives no account 
at all of very many most important facts ; yet I am 
not going to give it up. You cannot tell what may 
be found out yet. You cannot show that cycle and 
epicycle may not be so combined that my system shall 
give a complete account of the observed facts ; and 
until you can prove this, I shall not change my faith. 
If one should talk in this fashion we should 
dismiss him as an idiot ; and yet it is hard to see in 
what respect his reasoning would differ from that of 
those scientific men who maintain their limping, 
atheistic doctrine, solely upon the authority of what 
they expect to discover at some unknown time. But 
men do this. It is, indeed, true that nature's har- 
mony outruns our highest reason ; but it is equally 
true that this harmony is the product of no reason. 
There must be some weighty scientific facts which 
warrant such a conclusion; what they are, we have 
now to inquire. 

The fact of law, by a most remarkable confusion 
of thought, is offered by some scientists as a suffi- 



232 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

cient explanation of the universe. I had supposed 
that this transparent delusion had long since ceased 
to deceive any one ; but having recently met with 
some wretched conjuring with it in the interests of 
atheism, I must ask the reader's indulgence, and 
venture another explanation of this trite term. 
What, now, is a scientific law ? 

Without waiting to explain the method of discov- 
ery, it is admitted by every one that the laws of 
strictly inductive science are but generalizations 
from observed facts ; and that even when correct, 
they express nothing but orders of co-existence 
and succession. Such a law is nothing but a 
summation of the inductions, and gives no new 
knowledge. It is only an epitome, a short-hand 
expression, of the observed facts. But if this is 
the gist of the scientific idea of law, it is needless 
to point out how incapable law is of explaining any 
thing. For, suppose our statement of the law cor- 
rect, which it seldom is ; suppose the whole universe 
arranged in lines of co-existence and succession ; 
then, when science had done its work, nothing would 
be explained. It is a matter for the deepest wonder 
that any one should have ever been deluded by this 
empty gabble about " creation by law," " result of 
law," etc. The tendency of the human mind to 
personify its abstractions is indeed remarkable ; but 
the whole history of metaphysics cannot furnish a 
more striking example of it than this illustration 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 233 

given by " exact science." The schoolmen have fur- 
nished many a frightful example of this metaphysical 
tendency, wherewith to point a scientific moral or 
adorn a scientific tale. But so long as scientists 
hold up this most inane conception as the explana- 
tion of the world, they have little right to rail at any 
set of opinions under heaven. The laws of nature 
are the methods of nature, and are the very things to 
be explained. Why does nature move along lines of 
order ? why not along lines of confusion and chaos ? 
The latter are infinite, the former are few. How 
does it happen that the former are chosen and the 
latter avoided ? It is greatly to be desired that such 
reasoners would remember that law is method, not 
cause. Surely when one begins to offer the very 
fact to be explained as its sufficient explanation, he 
would not be very far wrong if he should begin to 
suspect that his mind is not adapted to logical inves- 
tigation. He had better turn his attention to poetry, 
and leave the cramping rigors of logic to others. 

The logical and scientific value of atheism depends 
upon the atomic theory and two assumed facts. 
Science conceives matter as composed of ultimate 
atoms which are endowed with certain powers of 
attraction and repulsion. Now these ultimate atoms 
bear no trace of origination, and, in default of proof 
that they have been created, we may assume them 
to be eternal. We have, then, in this conception, 
first, substantial being ; and, second, inherent power ; 



234 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

and in looking for the reason of things we must not 
go beyond this until it becomes plainly incompetent 
to explain the facts. Causes must not be multiplied 
beyond necessity ; and until it can be shown that 
the forces actually at work in the world do not 
suffice for its explanation, we must decline to postu- 
late any additional causes. If the various manifesta- 
tions of the world can be explained by referring them 
to the mutual attractions and repulsions of these 
atoms, then not only is there no need to postulate 
any more causes, but we cannot logically do so. 

With this theory as a starting-point, the atheist 
next proceeds to show that these atoms are capa- 
ble of doing the work of intelligence. To accom- 
plish this, he brings forward the nebular hypothesis 
to show how gravitation and inertia are capable 
of building up a solar system, which bears many 
marks of design ; and for the seeming adaptation of 
organic forms, he offers the Darwinian theory'. By 
means of these two theories, which he assumes to be 
established beyond question, he claims to have de- 
prived the argument from design of a great part of 
its force, and to have made it extremely probable 
that a deeper knowledge would destroy it altogether. 

We shall see the force of the argument more 
clearly if we examine the nebular theory. When it 
was believed that the members of the solar system 
were formed as they now exist, and placed in their 
orbits by Divine power, natural theologians saw 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 235 

evidence of purpose and wisdom in the relative 
arrangement of the parts. The existence of the sun 
in the center of the system ; the small eccentricity 
of the planets' orbits, whereby any great variation of 
light and heat is avoided ; the exact balance of cen- 
tral and tangential forces, by which the planets are 
kept in their orbits — all these things told of an 
adapting intelligence. On our own planet they 
found marks of mind, in the alternation of the sea- 
sons, and of day and night. The relative adjust- 
ment of land and water, and a thousand other things, 
told the same story of a superintending mind. 

But the nebular theory claims to explain all the 
phenomena by simple mechanical laws, and without 
the intervention of intelligence. It assumes only 
that its atoms were once widely diffused in space, 
and from this assumption it mathematically deduces 
the whole solar system. The nebulous matter began 
to condense by virtue of attraction, and the chances 
were infinite that it would not contract accurately 
on its center, which must produce revolution. This 
revolution called into' play the inertia of matter, 
and thus produced a centrifugal force. By further 
condensation the rate of revolution was necessarily 
increased, as can be mathematically demonstrated, 
and the centrifugal force increased also. Finally, at 
the orbit of Neptune, over the equator of the revolv- 
ing mass, the centrifugal force became equal to the 
attraction, and, upon further contraction, a ring of 



236 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

matter was left behind. Now, unless this ring was 
absolutely homogeneous and equally exposed to ex- 
ternal influences, it must contract unequally, and the 
result would be a disruption of the ring into frag- 
ments, which would at once assume the globular 
form. These smaller planets, unless they were of 
the same ■ size and were symmetrically disposed 
throughout the orbit, must collect into one — the 
planet Neptune. Formed in this way, the planets 
would necessarily have orbits of small eccentricity — 
the first mark of design. Owing to the greater 
velocity of the outer part of the ring over the inner 
part, the planets would all revolve upon their axes, 
which would produce day and night — the second 
mark of design. The shock at collecting into one 
mass would almost inevitably shift the plane of the 
orbit, which would produce seasons — the third mark 
of design. The sun, too, would be in the center of 
the system — the fourth mark of design. 

Again, in condensation, heat would be produced. 
This would call into action magnetic, electric, and 
chemical forces; and these by their interactions 
would finally bring the earth to its present form and 
condition. It is claimed, for these reasons, that the 
present condition of the solar system, together with 
all those prominent aspects which once seemed the 
work of purpose, are an exact though undetermined 
function of gravitation and inertia. How, then, can 
they be expressive of intelligence? What need is 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 237 

there to postulate intelligence to account for them ? 
Gravitation and inertia give an exhaustive explana- 
tion of the facts ; why seek further ? We may shrink 
from the conclusion, but the reason is satisfied. A 
physical explanation of the facts is found, and honor 
binds us to accept it. 

Here, then, in a most conspicuous case, matter 
seems to be doing the work of mind ; and the radical 
scientific position is that, if our faculties were more 
acute and our analysis more subtle, we could explain 
the most complex organization in the same way ; that 
we could begin with the simplest properties of matter, 
and mount by an unbroken chain of cause and effect to 
the highest forms of life. Already molecular mechan- 
ics are claiming control of chemistry, chemistry is 
pushing its frontiers over into physiology, and physi- 
ology is heir prospective to the mental and moral 
sciences. The nebular theory has made it plain that 
the solar system can be built up without intelligence ; 
and Darwinism has shown that the most complex and 
artificial forms can be developed from forms so 
rude and simple that no trouble need be taken to ac- 
count for them. Upon the strength of these facts it 
is claimed that teleology has received its death-blow. 
Matter and its inherent forces already explain much, 
and are daily explaining more. Besides, since the 
origination of matter cannot be proved, every fact 
ranged under a physical law is so much wrested from 
the government of God. The goal is evident. Nat- 



238 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ural laws are able to administer themselves. God is 
only a provisional hypothesis to explain outstand- 
ing facts, and is sure to be displaced by advancing 
knowledge. 

Here is the real root of the inveterate quarrel be- 
tween science and religion ; here is the fundamental 
cause of the strange fact, before noticed, that scientific 
study has always tended to embarrass belief. It is the 
thought, that whatever is the product of physical neces- 
sity cannot at the same time be expressive of purpose ; 
that the realms of nature, and of God, are mutually 
exclusive. This has been the claim of science, and 
the admission of religion. No wonder, then, that 
religion, prompted by an unerring instinct, has always 
looked with suspicion upon all attempts to formulate 
nature. Not that order is incompatible with will — 
for the theist has always held that with Him is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning — but because 
this necessary working of matter seems to exclude 
both the action, and the need, of intelligence. Upon 
this assumption, science at once puts on a fixed and 
fate-like aspect, before which every high faith silently 
withers, and every high emotion cries out in mortal 
anguish. Having made nature over to science, relig- 
ion has been forced to look for God outside of nature ; 
and, as the proofs of ancient birth have accumulated, 
God has been driven farther and farther away. Hence 
the pertinacity with which theists have sought for 
breaks in the physical chain ; and hence it is that, as 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 239 

chasm after chasm has filled up, they have felt as if 
the ground were slipping from under their feet, and 
the end of physical inquiry must be to elevate mat- 
ter to the throne of God. But I must confess that I 
feel rather suspicious of an argument for the Divine 
existence which is based upon nature's disorder and 
breaks, rather than upon its order and continuity. 
For if the disorder should ever be reduced, and the 
breaks mended, which is not at all unlikely, what then 
would become of the conclusion ? 

I believe that I have here represented the atheistic 
argument fairly. The claim is that a cloud of atoms 
endowed with definite spheres of attraction and repul- 
sion is able to work out all the results which seem to 
us to manifest intelligence and purpose. As speci- 
mens of atomic working, they exhibit the solar sys- 
tem and organic development. Teleology is driven 
out of astronomy and biology, and surely it requires 
little faith to believe that advancing knowledge will 
displace it altogether. Mr. Spencer says that the 
atoms and atomic forces are all he needs to build up the 
universe, and claims to have shown " that this trans- 
formation of an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity 
into a definite, coherent heterogeneity, which goes 
on every- where until it brings about a reverse trans- 
formation, is consequent upon certain simple laws of 
force. 

" Given these universal modes of action which are 
from moment to moment illustrated in the common- 



240 Review of Hetbert Spencer. 

est changes about us, and it follows that there cannot 
but result the observed metamorphosis of an indeter- 
minate uniformity into a determinate multiformity." 
We have seen some specimens, however, of his argu- 
ment, and need not vex ourselves with its weakness 
and debility any further. 

Now I have no purpose of running a muck against 
the nebular hypothesis, or of blaspheming the atomic 
theory ; but I think it can be easily shown that even 
admitting both as facts of nature, they necessarily 
postulate an extra-material power to account for their 
action. 

Let us place ourselves in thought back in the nebu- 
lous period and see what will happen. The atoms with, 
their attractive and repulsive forces are sown through 
space, constituting a gas almost infinitely rarer than 
the most perfect vacuum we can produce with an air- 
pump. Out of this void and formless gas, the entire 
physical universe has been built up. I say the entire 
physical universe, because if this theory leaves any 
thing unexplained, the teleological difficulties which 
it seeks to escape all come back in full force. It will 
hardly be claimed that this gas extended through in- 
finite space ; and, if the claim were made, it would 
paralyze the theory. For in that case no centers of 
attraction could be set up, and all parts being equally 
drawn in all directions no motion could result . The 
atoms would be powerless to initiate motion until 
some external force overset the equilibrium and set 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 241 

up centers of attraction. The original nebula, how- 
ever, is supposed to be finite in extent ; let us see what 
will happen on this supposition. It is assumed that 
it will contract ; but why should it not expand ? 
Gases, so far as we know them, tend to indefinite 
expansion. If this gas follow the law of gases in 
genera], we should expect it to expand instead of con- 
tracting. It must do so, indeed, unless the repulsive 
force of the gas is satisfied, in which case it will 
neither expand nor contract, but remain in equilibrium. 
The only possible result of such a warfare of attract- 
ive and repulsive forces must be a lifeless balance. 
There is no more reason why such a gas should con- 
dense than there is for the condensation of the at- 
mosphere, or of the light-bearing ether. If such a 
gas does contract, it can only be because there is an- 
other power than attraction and repulsion constantly 
at work to overturn the balance into which they con- 
stantly tend to fall. If the astronomer will not admit 
a power outside of the atoms, he must be content to 
see his theory perish. 

And even supposing contraction to be possible 
without the mediation of an external power, it is dif- 
ficult to see how the revolving mass can throw off 
rings in the manner assumed. If an external power 
revolves a body, the centrifugal force can be so in- 
creased as to overcome the cohesion. In this way 
water is thrown from the rim of a wheel, and grind- 
stones often burst. Professor Doremus a few years 
16 



242 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ago exhibited an experiment illustrating the way in 
which rings were formed in the evolution of the solar 
system. In all these cases, however, the revolving 
power was external to the mass ; but in the assumed 
evolution of the planets, the revolving force was in- 
ternal. The cause of the revolution was the contrac- 
tion of the mass, and hence the cause of the centrifugal 
force was also the attraction of the mass. Hence, 
as the centrifugal force increased the attraction in- 
creased ; and no reason can be given why one should 
overbalance the other. It follows, then, that they 
must remain in constant balance, and a ring could 
never be detached unless an external power be sup- 
posed which overturns the equilibrium. Here, again, 
the astronomer is forced to suppose some power be- 
yond the attractions and repulsions of his atoms. 

Indeed, no aggregate of atoms whatever can exist 
as a resisting body, by means of simple attractions 
and repulsions. For both being central forces, it is 
demonstrable that both must vary inversely as the 
square of the distance. It follows, then, that the 
atoms of a body are in equilibrium at all possible 
distances, and can offer no resistance to change of 
form. If you halve the distance you double both 
attraction and repulsion. If you double the distance, 
you halve both attraction and repulsion. It is clear, 
then, that the atoms can offer no resistance whatever 
to change of form, because at all distances the exist- 
ing forces are in equilibrium. Mr. Spencer notices 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 243 

this fact, and concludes that we don't know any thing 
about it. The true conclusion is, that body under 
simple attractions and repulsions is impossible. A 
co-ordinating force outside of the atoms, must be 
assumed as the possibility of a resisting mass. 

But we have further difficulties with this cloud of 
atoms which claims to be independent. When we 
reach a clear understanding of the conception, it 
seems to involve positive contradictions. We are 
distinctly taught that no atom can move itself — it 
moves only as it is moved. This is the law of in- 
ertia — a law, too, which is at least as well established 
as any in all science. In order, then, to conceive of 
these atoms as independent workers, we must con- 
ceive of a series of dependent motions which at the 
same time depends on nothing. The motion of each 
atom depends entirely upon the motion of an ante- 
cedent atom ; and unless we can conceive that a thing 
should be at the same time dependent and independ- 
ent, conditioned and unconditioned, we cannot admit 
the independence of atomic working. 

But cannot the totality of the atoms be independ- 
ent, though the individual atoms be conditioned ? 
This involves the same contradiction ; and is, besides, 
in hopeless opposition to the doctrine of the equiva- 
lence of forces. Working force is constantly falling 
into equilibrium, and is lost to the dunamis of the 
universe ; hence the totality of atoms could only come 
to a stand-still from which they could never emerge. 



244 Review of Herbert Spencer, 

If, then, we grant that the atoms, when once in motion, 
can work the machinery of the world, we cannot grant 
the sufficiency of the materialistic explanation until 
we learn what set them in motion. That first motion, 
that initial action, can only be viewed as self-deter- 
mined, and hence extra-material. Self-motion there 
must be. To put it in the atom, removes the atom 
from the category of matter and denies the law of 
inertia. To put it outside of the atom admits the insuf- 
ficiency of the atomic explanation. All mechanical 
motion implies the self-moved, and thought cannot 
stop short of affirming self-motion as the explanation 
of all physical activity. Science can choose between 
positivism and theism ; its atheistic conjurings must 
cease. Once upon the metaphysical road, there is no 
stopping at the half-way house of atheism. " Athe- 
ists must be viewed as the most inconsequent of 
theologians." 

But difficulties thicken as we advance. We can- 
not even grant that the atoms can take care of 
themselves after they have been set in motion. I 
have already pointed out that mere attraction and 
repulsion can only result in a dead balance, but a 
still greater difficulty meets us upon nearer examina- 
tion. The doctrine assumes that no atoms are in con- 
tact, but are separated by void spaces. It is forced 
to this assumption by the facts of expansion and con- 
traction, and also in order to make the conception of 
motion possible. Let us, then, picture one of these 






■ Review of Herbert Spencer. 245 

atoms as it exists, cut off by an absolute void from 
all its neighbors. What can it do ? What influ- 
ence can it exert upon any other? Can matter act 
where it is not ? across an absolute void ? without 
any medium whatever? Are these possible concep- 
tions ? Can a theory which involves such doctrines 
as these assume to be rational ? To escape this diffi- 
culty, some scientists have postulated an ether which 
penetrates the interatomic spaces and serves as the 
medium of communication. But, if that ether is im- 
material, this conception is an abandonment of the 
atomic theory as a sufficient explanation. If on the 
other hand it is material, the difficulty returns when 
we inquire into its constitution. It in turn is con- 
ceived as formed of atoms, and these atoms are either 
in contact or not. If in contact we have a plenum, 
and motion is impossible. If not in contact we have 
the difficulty of action across a void, and where the 
actor itself is not. But these are impossible and 
contradictory conceptions. For it is plain that the 
cause must be where the effect is — the force and its 
working cannot be conceived as separated. If, then, 
the effect of this solitary atom is produced over yon- 
der, the power, the force of the atom must be over 
yonder also ; and the matter of the atom, and its 
forces, are divorced by an absolute void. But it is 
one of the axioms of science, one too of which we 
hear a great deal, that no force can exist apart from 
substance. But if such a conception of atomic work- 



246 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

ing does not imply a separate existence, it would be 
hard to say what does. Clearly the force is entirely 
separate from the atom and independent of it, when 
it wanders off in this fashion. Besides, since force 
can exist separately, the atom itself has no further 
function, it is only postulated as the base of the 
forces ; and since it is useless for this purpose, it 
may be allowed to drop out of existence. But as 
force cannot 'exist apart from substance, so the scien- 
tists say, and since these forces are independent of 
the substance of the atom, we must look for some 
other foundation for the working powers of nature. 
The scientists may solve these contradictions at their 
leisure. It would not be difficult to criticise the 
atomic conception in general ; but, however just that 
conception may be, it is sure that this doctrine of 
atomic action is contradictory and self-destructive. 
I allow the scientist to look upon his atoms as cen- 
ters of attractive and repulsive forces ; and I then 
affirm, plainly and distinctly, that these powers are 
powerless without an extra-atomic power. I affirm 
that all the working forces of nature, from the attrac- 
tion of gravitation down through light, heat, elec- 
tricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, cohesion, and 
adhesion, are utterly helpless without the existence 
of an overruling, immaterial force by which the scat- 
tered atoms are co-ordinated and controlled, and by 
which the atomic forces are enabled to work their 
appropriate effects. I say, then, not only that atoms 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 247 

are unable to construct a solar system without the 
aid of an immaterial power, not only that they can- 
not keep out of a dead balance of attraction and 
repulsion without an immaterial power ; but I say 
firmly that they cannot do any thing at all, cannot 
effect even the slightest motion, without the working 
of an immaterial power. 

To the atheistic objection, that we must not 
postulate any supernatural cause until we have 
found out all that natural causes can accomplish, 
I answer, that natural causes, as such, can do 
nothing ; instead of being competent to an indefi- 
nite amount of work, they are competent to noth- 
ing whatever. I say, then, science, as well as relig- 
ion, postulates as its sole possibility, the existence 
of a spiritual, universal, ever-active power; and, 
by consequence, a spiritual, universal, ever-active 
Being. To the objection (weighty only from its 
senselessness) that this is metaphysics, I answer, 
that it is metaphysics from which there is no escape. 
Science must either adopt positivism, and give up all 
attempt at explanation, or it must accept this conclu- 
sion. If we are to think at all on this subject, and 
think rationally, we can reach no other. Positivism 
or theism ; there is no middle ground. The athe- 
istic argument is the exact parallel of the renowned 
snake which began at his tail and swallowed himself, 
leaving zero as the result of the process. The atomic 
theory serves well enough as the elephant which up- 



248 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

holds the world, but is in equal need of support itself. 
If our faith is sufficiently robust to conceive the 
atoms as standing alone, we may as well dispense 
with both elephant and tortoise and poise the world 
on nothing. 

The administration of things being taken out of 
the atoms' hands, we are prepared to listen with 
greater equanimity to the claim that Mr. Darwin 
has demonstrated, that purpose is needless to explain 
the complexity of organic existence. We have seen 
how the nebular theory failed in its attempt to be in- 
pendent ; we have now to inquire whether this claim 
has any greater weight of evidence. 

Considered as a theory, no one will claim that 
Darwinism is established. Very many, and at pres- 
ent unanswerable, objections stand out against it ; 
and it is beginning to be apparent that the doctrine, 
if true, can only be true in a greatly modified form. 
But granting the truth of the theory, the claim that 
it removes the need of a guiding intelligence from 
the development of organic nature is a most curious 
logical inconsequence. There is not much agree- 
ment among the disciples of the development theory, 
and hence it is difficult to say what the precise 
teaching is. Lotze, a most able expounder of the 
doctrine, declares that the theory cannot be worked 
out unless we assume in the original nebula the 
seeds of all that afterward appear. Even the seeds 
of life and mind must be scattered there to make the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 249 

development possible. Mr. Darwin's strange theory 
of pan-genesis, which makes the original germ not 
only the parent, but the actual possessor of endless 
germs which are afterward to be developed, implies 
the same assumption. Now surely a view which ex- 
plains evolution by a previous involution, without 
giving any account of that involution, does not throw 
any very brilliant light upon the cause of organic 
development. Such a doctrine merely removes the 
question one step further back, and, so far from ex- 
plaining nature, rather increases the mystery. 

Whether the doctrine implies a necessary progress 
of organic forms is also a question. Some teach that 
development is necessarily upward, and others will 
hear nothing of such a doctrine. The naturalists 
may be left to settle this question among themselves ; 
but whichever alternative is adopted the denial of 
purpose is in no way warranted. If this develop- 
ment is necessarily upward, the only rational ex- 
planation would be that such upward movement is 
due to the fact that a supreme intelligence is real- 
izing in such development his own pre-determined 
plan and purpose. Mechanism knows nothing of 
higher and lower ; and when the blind forces of na- 
ture (if there be such) are seen holding on an upward 
course for untold millions of years, ever climbing to 
higher forms and giving birth to growing harmony 
and adaptation, the only supposition which at all ac- 
counts for the fact is that there is a controlling pur- 



250 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

pose at work which guides these powers to a foreseen 
goal. No mechanical necessity whatever can be 
shown for the steady progress ; and as science in- 
creases the time during which the toiling forces have 
been faithful to what can only be described as a plan, 
the mechanical explanation becomes so incredible 
that it can only be accepted by one who is deter- 
mined to believe whatever suits himself, in defiance 
of all probability and all fact. Let Darwinism be 
true ; if it holds a doctrine of progressive development, 
it makes a sorry figure in attempting to deny a con- 
trolling purpose. 

More commonly, however, the theory is held to 
imply no such necessity. Mr. Darwin himself, I 
think, will not accept progressive development as an 
integral part of his theory. At all events, those who 
hold it atheistically, expressly repudiate such teach- 
ing. With them the primitive organism is looked 
upon as a variable which develops in all directions, 
and those forms live which can live. The principle 
of natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, cuts 
off all unadapted forms, leaving the others to survive, 
and propagate their own peculiarities, Keep up this 
sifting process through indefinite time, and it must 
be a weak imagination which would be unable to con- 
ceive that the forms of life must become indefinitely 
various, while their continuous existence would im- 
ply an adaptation to their circumstances. This prin- 
ciple of natural selection, too, would constantly tend 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 251 

to make this adaptation more complete. As the re- 
sult of such a process we should finally have a world 
stocked with the most complex living forms, all dis- 
playing a most accurate adaptation to their condition, 
and yet this adaptation would be entirely unex- 
pressive of purpose. In such case, we should be 
compelled to turn the teleologist's argument around 
and say, not that organisms are adapted to their sur- 
roundings in order that they may live, but that they 
live because they are adapted to their surroundings. 
Mr. Huxley illustrates the argument as follows : 

" That which struck the present writer most for- 
cibly on his first perusal of the ' Origin of Species ' 
was the conviction that teleology, as commonly un- 
derstood, had received its death-blow, for the teleolog- 
ical argument runs thus : An organ or organism (A) is 
precisely fitted to perform a function or purpose (B) ; 
therefore it was specially constructed to perform that 
function. In Paley's famous illustration, the adapta- 
tion of all the parts of the watch to the function, or 
purpose, of showing the time, is held to be the evi- 
dence that the watch was specially contrived to that 
end, on the ground that the only cause we know of 
competent to produce such an effect as a watch 
which shall keep time, is a contriving intelligence 
adapting the means directly to that end. 

" Suppose, however, that any one had been able to 
show that the watch had not been made directly by 
any person, but that it was the result of the modifi- 



252 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

cation of another watch which kept time but poorly, 
and that this again had proceeded from a structure 
which could hardly be called a watch at all, seeing 
that it had no figures on the dial and the hands 
were rudimentary ; and that going back and back, in 
time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the 
earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric ; and 
imagine that it had been possible to show that all 
these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency 
of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, 
from something in the surrounding world which 
helped all variations in the direction of an accurate 
time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions ; 
then it is obvious that the force of Paley's argument 
would be gone, for it would be demonstrated that an 
apparatus thoroughly well adapted to a particular 
purpose might be the result of a method of trial and 
error worked by unintelligent agents, as well as of 
the direct application of the means appropriate to 
that end by an intelligent agent."* 

I am not aware that Paley's argument necessitates 
any peculiar conception of the method of organic 
creation. No natural theologian pretends to any 
conception of the mode of the Divine working. He 
only insists that when we find a result which is re- 
plete with relations and adaptations which are unin- 
telligible without the conception of purpose, we must 
conclude that it is the work of purpose. With this 

*"Lay Sermons," p. 301. 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 253 

fact in mind, consider Mr. Huxley's illustration. 
It, of course, leaves the rudimentary watch unex- 
plained, and also all those purpose-like arrangements 
in nature which make the watch possible. The 
" method of trial and error " is worked by unintelli- 
gent agents, but no account whatever is given of 
their origin and action. Yet, granting all this capital 
to the illustration, it does not get along very well. 
There is a " something in the surrounding world 
which helps all variations in the direction of a good 
time-keeper, and checks all those in other direc- 
tions." But when this process is kept up for a long 
time, and this variable, indeterminate barrel is held to 
the single direction of a good watch, it begins to look 
as if some power had the creation of a watch in 
view. Surely if we were told that a florist had es- 
tablished a certain variety of flower by carefully 
selecting specimens which tended in that direction, 
and by rejecting all others, we should hardly feel 
justified in concluding that he had no purpose in 
such selection. The very indetermination which 
this illustration ascribes to the primitive organism, is 
the strongest reason for introducing a controlling 
plan or purpose, for there is no reason why this 
variable should develop up instead of down. There 
is no reason why at any point it should not turn 
back upon itself and destroy all that it had gained. 
If then we put such a germ at the beginning of things, 
we are forced to admit that it has developed upward, 



254 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

and along lines of order and purpose. It has been 
met and molded by such conditions that the best has 
proved also the strongest ; and in this way, out of a 
primitive indeterminateness, has been brought a 
most intelligent, orderly, and harmonious system. 
Why ? Before the doctrine can claim to have dis- 
proved the existence of purpose in nature, it must 
answer this question. No mechanical necessity can 
be shown. Assume a controlling purpose, and all 
becomes luminous and intelligible. Deny it, and all 
is incomprehensible. 

Mr. Spencer, indeed, claims that he has explained 
it, but we must hesitate to give him our confi- 
dence. His argument, in brief, is that the homo- 
geneous nebula must do something. It must lapse 
into the heterogeneous, and something important 
must happen. When things begin to "differen- 
tiate " and " integrate," and " effects " take to 
" multiplying," creation is fairly set upon its feet. 
Why they should not " differentiate " and " inte- 
grate" themselves into chaos, and "multiply" eternal 
confusion, he does not take the pains to tell. Besides, 
all this happened so long ago that criticism is im- 
possible. He has no confidence in these great prin- 
ciples in recent times, however ; for now organic 
development is chiefly controlled by " the yet unex- 
plained principle of hereditary transmission." The 
saving suggestion, however, is added that this princi- 
ple is itself due to the differentiations, etc. He defines 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 255 

evolution as follows : " Evolution is a change from 
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, 
coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differ- 
entiations and integrations." Now I defy any one 
to give any reason why such a process should ever 
pass out of chaos. But must not something come 
out of such a process ? Is not force persistent ? 
Certainly, something must happen. A lawless and 
eternal confusion must certainly happen, and nothing 
more. The argument starts with the nebula, and 
postulates that something must happen ; and then, 
plunging out of sight in the darkness of the un- 
known, suddenly re-appears in the daylight of 
creation, and without further argument triumphantly 
assumes that all this must have happened. To 
question this, is to convict one's self of denying the 
persistence of force ; even to suggest that force must 
have been controlled in its working, is to be guilty 
of the same crime ; and as this is the unpardonable, 
logical sin, it follows conclusively that the argument 
is a demonstration. Whatever has happened must 
have happened ; hence the nebula must transform 
itself into order and harmony. 

Again, until the correlation of physical and vital 
force is established, this doctrine of organic develop- 
ment from low and simple forms is in opposition to 
the law of identity and contradiction. The under- 
lying thought of the atheistic argument is that a 
mere speck of organization, such as might well be 



256 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the product of chance combination of forces, would, 
with an infinitesimal increment and infinite time, de- 
velop into the sum of organic existence. Such a 
conception is possible if the vital and physical forces 
correlate ; for in that case the power which appears 
in organic forms is only a change of mode, and not a 
creation. But we have seen that there are insuper- 
able difficulties in the way of assuming such an 
identity, and that hence vital force must be conceived 
as something altogether peculiar and unique. Now 
the law of identity forces us to conceive a thing as 
always identical with itself. We can neither write 
A = A + B nor A = A— B, except upon the supposition 
B = 0. Hence at any point of organic development, 
we can only view the actual, as the realization of the 
potential. The evolving germ is not creating but un- 
folding ; the implicit is becoming explicit. Until the 
development-man proves that vital force is only trans- 
formed physical force, he must put into that seed 
which he plants at the root of things, all that actually 
comes out of it. If he does, he throws no light upon 
the origin of things. If he don't, his argument re- 
quires us to accept the equation : zero=infinity. In 
either case he is in a sad plight. 

The reasoning by which the fact of purpose in 
nature is disproved, is thus seen to be wretched 
enough, even if we allow the atheist his atomic forces. 
But we have shown, in addition, that these atoms 
themselves postulate, as the necessary condition of 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 257 

their working, a universal, ever-active, spiritual power. 
The atoms then must drop out of sight in the argu- 
ment, and the question becomes : What is the nature 
of this all-ruling power ? This universal being, in 
whom all nature lives and moves, what is it ? By the 
previous arguments, we were forced to admit its spir- 
ituality and freedom. The continuous plan and order 
of nature, its countless adaptations, its complex and 
exquisite mechanism, its harmonious balance of war- 
ring powers, are all utterly unintelligible without the 
supposition that this being is a self-conscious intelli- 
gence. The so-called mechanical forces serve a con- 
trolling purpose. The chemical forces serve a con- 
trolling purpose. The organic forces seem instinct 
with intelligence. Both in the single organ, and in 
the wide-reaching law, we mark the presence of 
mind. The units and the totality are alike informed 
by what is inconceivable except as a guiding reason. 
This hypothesis is not unwarranted. It postulates 
nothing strange. We refer our own activity to our 
conscious will and purpose, and we but extend this 
principle when we refer nature's activity to a con- 
scious will and purpose. Purpose rules in the action 
of a rational man ; and, finding nature replete with 
marks of purpose, he concludes that it rules in nature 
too. And this hypothesis is the only one that ex- 
plains the facts. There is no scientific discovery 
which in the least weakens its force. All the theories 

brought against it, at best, are full of impassable 
17 



258 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

breaks ; while a closer examination shows that every 
one of them is self-destructive. Science, then, is shut 
up to positivism or theism. If it chooses to content 
itself with a lifeless registration of coexistence and 
sequence, it can make the attempt. But if it enters 
upon any explanation at all, it cannot stop short of a 
personal God. I gather this argument from a con- 
sideration of the teachings of natural science, with- 
out touching upon the psychological question. A 
study of the existence and nature of the human 
mind, would serve to show still more clearly the con- 
tradictory nature of the atheistic argument. But 
that is needless. Theism is the only doctrine that 
has any rational or scientific evidence, and both 
reason and science bind us to accept it. 

It might be claimed, however, that we have estab- 
lished pantheism instead df theism ; that the previ- 
ous arguments all tend to merge the world and its 
activities into God, and make him the only worker in 
the universe. I think it could be dialectically shown 
that even the previous arguments necessitate a dis- 
tinction between God and the world ; but not to vex 
the reader with such a metaphysical discussion, the 
argument does not establish that comprehensive 
pantheism which alone is morally pernicious. As 
long as the human will and personality are left intact, 
all the conditions of religion are met ; and the external 
world might be given over to pantheism without prej- 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 259 

udice to any moral interests whatever. But the fact 
of personality and freedom is so emphatically given 
in consciousness that it cannot be denied without 
discrediting consciousness in general, and wrecking 
the whole fabric of knowledge. We have here an 
insuperable barrier to that comprehensive pantheism 
which swallows up the human will and makes religion 
impossible ; and I am not careful to escape panthe- 
ism in its more restricted meaning. Indeed, I am 
persuaded that the piety of our time pines most of 
all for a conception of theism which will enable us 
to find God in the world, and also make a place for 
the world in God. The old deistic conception of God 
as prime-mover, and of the world as a machine 
which only needs to be set a-going to run on forever, 
is scarcely less fatal to religion than atheism itself. 
Both science and religion have adopted this concep- 
tion to a very great degree, and the result has been 
the unnatural divorce and strife which have marked 
their entire history. 

Such a conception was comparatively harmless 
while the world was young; but as the universe 
grew in space and time, and marks of an ancient 
birth accumulated on every side, religion began 
to grow uneasy. The date of the Divine working 
was put farther and farther away, and belief in such 
working grew more faint. The world had taken 
care of itself so long, that it became quite credible 
that it might yet make a declaration of independence. 



260 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

The secondary causes which had managed the affairs 
of the empire through so many years, began to act as 
if they intended to usurp the throne. By the very 
supposition, nature was emptied of God, and the divine 
presence could be looked for only outside of nature. 
To this thought is due the pertinacity with which 
religion has insisted upon the fact of miracles ; and 
each infraction of nature's order has been a carefully- 
treasured proof of a power above the world, and 
beyond it. But in general, the ever-widening realm 
of law has had a paralyzing effect upon religion ; and 
piety has pined and ached for some token of a living 
God. A being whose activity is purely historical will 
not satisfy its longings. It is not enough to make 
him the author of nature ; he must be its adminis- 
trator as well. If religion is to live, some way must 
be found of reaching God, in the movements of the 
world about us. And it seems to me that this de- 
mand is met by the theistic conception which science 
now enforces, of a universal, ever-living, ever-active 
God, in whom all things live and move and have 
their being. Viewed in this way, nature, from being 
a dead mechanism, lights up with life, and becomes 
instinct with thought and beauty. Instead of being 
an impenetrable wall which separates us from the 
Eternal, it becomes rather one mode in which he man- 
ifests himself to us. It is no longer an obscuring vail 
which no effort of ours can pierce, but is rather the 
background upon which the lights and shadows of the 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 261 

infinite thought are seen to play. Instead of being 
rigid, and incompetent to spiritual uses, it becomes 
rather the pliant and subtle instrument of expression, 
whereby God communicates to us his thought and 
purpose. 

This conception, too, serves to relieve theism of 
a certain hardness which the doctrine of final causes 
always tends to produce. That doctrine, assuming 
that every thing is done for some purpose beyond 
itself, leaves no room for a spontaneous activity which 
needs no ulterior justification. The error is similar 
to that into which religion falls when it insists that 
all the movements of the soul should have a con- 
scious moral purpose. In this way religion often 
brings a hardness and stiffness into life, which is at 
once unlovely and unhappy. The free movement of 
innocent mirth and feeling is looked upon with sus- 
picion ; and the unpurposed outflow of sympathy and 
affection into acts of tenderness and gentleness is 
visited with rebuke, because it can give no moral 
account of itself. As if it needed any justification 
beyond its own tenderness and beauty ! Now as a too 
rigid interpretation of life by a moral standard over- 
looks its atmosphere, and misses all that is spontane- 
ous, so, I think, a too rigid interpretation of nature 
by a scheme of final causes, misses completely a most 
important aspect of creation. Nature no doubt ex- 
ists for the instruction and development of created 
minds.; and its steady laws are the faithful covenant 



262 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

which the Eternal keeps with his children. Think 
away nature's uniformity, and it becomes useless as 
an instrument of instruction. Think away the minds 
which are to be developed by it, and a large aspect 
of nature becomes meaningless, a purposeless and 
idle stir. 

But creation has other uses too. It is not merely 
a book of science with its didactic purpose ; it is 
also a book of song which seems the spontaneous 
utterance of emotion. It exists not only for teach- 
ing, but also for expression. The beauty of cloud 
and sky ; the beauty which lies hidden in the snow- 
and-ice crystals which sheet the frozen regions of the 
Pole ; the beauty of coral and sponge and shell with 
which the ocean's floor is spread ; the beauty of grass 
and flower in forest depths, and far out upon the 
prairie, and deep beneath "the waves of the sea — 
what is all this for ? For a didactic purpose ? Surely 
not. It exists for itself, and is its own justification. 
Take away created minds, and order and beauty and 
harmony must still exist. It is not to be thought of, 
that chaos should forever abide in the presence of the 
Eternal. Be it physical or be it moral, chaos must 
make way for a new earth. These ask no leave from 
man, and need no audience from him. They are in- 
deed related to man, but do not exist solely for him. 
They express not so much the thought, as the medi- 
tation, of the Eternal ; not so much a purposed 
outgoing as a spontaneous overflow. Except we 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 263 

bear this in mind, we shall be in danger of judging 
nature by too narrow a standard, and of erecting 
human needs as the sufficient reason why the uni- 
verse exists. 

Yet, after all that can be said about the order and 
grandeur of the external world, it must still be held 
that sense and external nature are but poor inter- 
preters of the Eternal. They ask questions which 
they cannot answer, and force upon us problems for 
which the senses furnish no solution. The clearer 
the proof of a supreme intelligence, the darker and 
more perplexing does the moral problem of the world 
become. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
together in pain. From the very beginning, nature has 
been " red in tooth and claw with ravin." On every 
side we see the most prodigious waste of faculty, of 
happiness, and of life. " Of fifty seeds she often brings 
but one to bear." Generations and races of men seem 
born, only to be beaten and pelted, by want and misery. 
A positive malignity, even, seems to exist in nature, 
producing contrivances for the production of pain, dis- 
torting, thwarting, destroying. What does it all mean ? 
What purpose does it serve ? If chance controlled all 
events, we might expect such things ; but how can they 
be reconciled to the control of a supreme wisdom ? 
What must be the character of the being who can even 
permit such disorder in his empire ? These are ques- 
tions which nature suggests, but does not answer. 

Such hold has this aspect of things taken upon the 



264 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

thought of some, that men like Schopenhauer and 
Hartmann have ventured to say that existence is a 
huge slough of woe and wretchedness, from which 
every rational man will seek to escape. The goal for 
which every one must long is annihilation. To fuse 
the skirts of being, and sink into the void, is the 
bright hope which the future offers ; and for its ful- 
fillment, we must long as the tired and tossing inhab- 
itant of the sick-bed waits for the coming of the 
morning. Yonder are the frontiers of being,' and 
quickly we shall reach them. Then the last grand 
rush of darkness, the healing wave of annihilation, 
and the wicked cease from troubling and the weary 
are at rest. 

It is clear enough that this is a partial and dis- 
torted view of life ; and yet, if we were restricted 
to the theism of nature alone, we must be left in 
painful suspense concerning the moral character 
of God. It is only as we consult our own moral 
nature, that we are enabled to resist the distressing 
suggestions which the world at times forces upon us. 
The highest revelation of God is found, not in nature, 
but in those rare and noble souls which have been 
the pole-stars of the race. We cannot but think 
that these most truly represent the Divine character. 
We cannot but think that the goodness in us is 
a faint type of a goodness more august than our 
own. Men may have a narrower vision from the 
observatory of astronomy than from the closet of 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 265 

private prayer. The repented sin, the grief over the 
foul surrender, the renewal of the abandoned strife, 
the stirrings of a pure affection, the loyalty to duty, 
may teach us more of God than we could learn from 
volumes of natural theology. Given the idea of God, 
the study of nature serves for its expansion and veri- 
cation ; but nature alone could furnish no adequate 
conception. From within we learn that, in spite of 
all opposing appearances, there is an essential good- 
ness at the heart and root of things, which, in time, 
will justify itself and make its vindication plain. 
Men in general have never been able to believe other- 
wise. The disorder has been due, not to Divine 
malignity, but to an " adversary " who, in the world's 
harvest-field, sowed tares. Nor have they failed to 
attribute to the good a final victory. Ormuzd and 
Ahriman strive, but the contest shall not last forever. 
At the end of the great cycle Ormuzd must con- 
quer ; and Ahriman is to be thrust into unfathomable 
depths, to disturb and distort no longer. Nor is it 
otherwise in our own Scriptures. As the curtain of 
revelation is about to fall, the river of life, foul from 
the taint of human history, is seen to grow clear as 
crystal once more. The discord which had vexed 
earth's harmony so long, is heard to cease. The un- 
known depths of an outer darkness swallow up all 
that is foul and polluting, and in far perspective ap- 
pear the new heaven and the new earth. That it 
shall be so, is an inextinguishable conviction of the 



266 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

human soul ; and the distressing aspects of nature 
are powerless against it. 

Meanwhile, too, a deeper knowledge is ever serv- 
ing to show that all things have their place ; 
and, one by one, the dark aspects of nature lose 
their gloomy character, and light up with benevo- 
lent purpose. Nature cannot be judged by the 
experience of a day. Brief observation shows that 
the moon rolls around the earth. It requires a 
longer time to discover that both earth and moon 
roll around the sun. But the fact that earth, moon, 
and sun are in motion around some point in the con- 
stellation of Hercules, unfolds itself only to the ob- 
servation of years. It is the same in our judgment 
of nature. There is much which, at first glance, 
seems isolated and discordant ; but as our vision 
sweeps a wider circle order is more clearly seen. 
The direction of nature begins to manifest itself; 
and that which we thought a reflux of the current 
proves to be only an eddy which in nowise disturbs 
the onward flow. Looking at the general course of 
things, it is clearly seen to be upward, and prophetic 
of a better yet to come. The discordant event be- 
comes harmonious at last, and the underlying good- 
ness and righteousness vindicate themselves. It is 
no malignant being who has lighted up our hearts 
and homes with affection. It is no immoral being 
who has planted in the human soul an ineradicable 
reverence for goodness. It is no immoral being who 



J 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 267 

has sent nation after nation down into the dust, and 
compelled them to drink the cup of a bitter and ter- 
rible retribution, because they dared to do injustice. 
If at any time Belshazzar has committed sacrilege, in 
that same hour and hall, invisible hands have written 
his doom. Whoever is attentive to history can, in 
the very hour in which successful iniquity is crowned, 
hear the words, Thou art weighed in the balances, 
and art found wanting. That final purpose, in which 
all lower cycles of purpose are included, is as yet but 
dimly seen ; but nature and history both, more and 
more clearly testify to 

"One God that ever lives and loves ; 

One law, one life, one element ; 

And one far-off, divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

" What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt 
know hereafter," was the word uttered long ago. 
Meanwhile w,e are content to know that in Him all 
things live and move and have their being. His 
working is not historical, but eternal. Still he hold- 
eth the deep in the hollow of his hand, and calleth 
out the host of heaven by number. The Divine 
presence is no less real in the dome of Newton's sky 
than in that which overhung the garden of Eden. 
And I count it a great religious gain that science 
has completely discredited the old deistic conception, 
and vindicated the existence and the presence of the 
living God. 



268 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

When any doctrine, however clear, is disproved, 
we intend to give it up. As friends bear their dead 
forth to the green fields, and lay the cherished forms 
away forever out of sight, so, when science renders it 
impossible longer to hold them, will we gather up 
our most cherished beliefs and bury them forever. 
We seek truth, though it leave us in the world 
orphans, and write upon every tombstone, " Death 
is an eternal sleep." But there need be no fears of 
such a result. Again and again has the death of the 
Eternal been proclaimed, but in every case it proved 
that the wish, not reason, was father to the thought. 
Times innumerable has religion been overthrown ; 
but still the devout soul kneels and prays. Aye, 
more, as in the retreat of the ten thousand, the 
weapons cast into our camp have been used to kindle 
our fires. We could not have spared the criticism 
to which we have been subjected. In its fierce blaze 
superstitions have shriveled and perished. Narrow 
and unworthy creeds have gone out in flame, and 
left the human mind free for a truer and nobler 
thought. Nature's calm uniformities overawed the 
tendency to find tokens of Divine displeasure in 
every untoward event, and taught man that there is 
no especial smile in the sunshine, and no peculiar 
judgment in the storm. Its vast extent also warned 
him against the egotism of supposing that the uni- 
verse exists fo,r him alone. 

But now that we have in a measure learned 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 269 

these lessons, we look round to find that we would 
not have back the old conceptions, if they could 
be had for the wishing. Who would longer care 
in the interests of piety to set up the date of crea- 
tion 4004 B. C. ? or to restore the crystal firma- 
ment with its points of light ? The long times 
of geology and astronomy seem sublimest sym- 
bols of His infinite years. And surely the flash- 
ing splendors of the skies, the ponderous orbs, the 
blazing suns, the measureless distances, the mighty 
periods, are infinitely more worthy of the Creator 
than the pitiful, peep-show heaven for which the 
Church once contended. Never before was the uni- 
verse so fit a manifestation and abode of the God we 
love as it is to-day. Never did the heavens so de- 
clare the glory of God as they do now. The most 
impressive lesson of the past is to fear nothing that 
is true, and to despair of nothing that is good. It 
bids us lay aside that secret skepticism of our own 
teachings, which is at once our weakness and our 
disgrace, and fear nothing from the truth, and fear 
nothing for it. We listen without dread, or even 
fear, for the last and worst word that science can 
utter ; and we are confident that when that word 
shall have been uttered, the devout soul will still 
have the warrant of reason, as well as of faith, for 
joining in that ancient ascription of praise to the 
" King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise 
God." 



270 Review of Herbert Spencer. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 

T T only remains to collect the results of our ex- 
■*■ amination, that we may get a connected view 
of the principles of the New Philosophy. As be- 
tween science and religion in general, we found that 
Mr. Spencer's arguments were such as to make both 
impossible. The ideas involved in religion are, in 
the last analysis, no less conceivable than those in- 
volved in science. If, then, the inconceivability of 
these ideas is a sufficient reason for discarding re- 
ligion, it is also warrant enough for discarding science. 
But if the fundamental reality can so manifest itself 
as to make a true science possible, there is no reason 
why it should not so manifest itself as to make a true 
religion possible — no reason in the argument, I mean ; 
the needs of Mr. Spencer's system are reason enough 
for him. 

The claim that the limited and conditioned nature 
of our faculties renders religious knowledge impossi- 
ble, tells with equal force against all knowledge. 
The limited nature of our faculties does, indeed, con- 
fine us to a limited knowledge — but a limited knowl- 
edge may be true as far as it goes. If so, we may 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 27 r 

trust the knowledge we have ; if not, all truth disap- 
pears. To deny, then, the validity of religious knowl- 
edge, on the ground of its limitation, can only end in 
the denial of all knowledge. It must be borne in 
mind that, with Mr. Spencer, the unknowable is one 
and identical, though there is nowhere any proof of 
this unity. For any argument he offers, there might 
be an infinite number of unknowables, all quantita- 
tively and qualitatively different. His position, then, 
is that the limited nature of our faculties utterly pro- 
hibits us from reaching the unknowable on its relig- 
ious side, while we are entirely competent to deal 
with it on its scientific side. The truth is, that the 
unknowable is simply formless, indeterminate, dead 
substance, which obeys only mechanical laws, and 
has no religious side. Mr. Spencer, however, does 
not admit this, and confuses both himself and his 
readers with logical jugglery and thimble-rigging 
over the absolute, the infinite, the unconditioned, the 
first cause, etc. The following conclusions emerge 
at the end of the show : 

Religion is impossible, because it involves unthink- 
able ideas ; 

Science is possible, though it involves the same 
unthinkable ideas. 

God must be conceived as self-existent, and is, 
therefore, an untenable hypothesis ; 

The fundamental reality must be conceived as self- 
existent, and is not an untenable hypothesis. 



272 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

God must be conceived as eternal ; and is, hence, 
an untenable hypothesis ; 

The fundamental reality must also be conceived as 
eternal, and is not an untenable hypothesis. 

To affirm the eternity of God, would land us in in- 
soluble contradictions ; 

To affirm the eternity of matter and force, is the 
highest necessity of our thought. 

God must be conceived as first cause and absolute. 
But these conceptions contradict each other—a cause 
cannot be absolute, since it stands in relation to its 
effect ; the absolute cannot be cause, since cause im- 
plies relation. 

Yet the only absolute we know is known as first 
cause, is known in causal relation to the universe. 
All other absolutes are metaphysical impostors, and 
the alleged difficulty vanishes. 

God must also be conceived as infinite. "He must 
contain all power and transcend all law," and "can- 
not be distinguished from the finite by the absence 
of any quality which the finite possesses. 

God possesses all power, but cannot reveal himself. 

God, though possessing all that the finite does, has 
no knowledge, no consciousness, no intelligence, no 
personality. 

Our highest wisdom is to recognize the mystery 
of the absolute, and abandon the " carpenter theory " 
of creation for the higher view, that "evolution is a 
change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 273 

to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through con- 
tinuous differentiations and integrations." 

The discussion which involves all these harmonies 
is fitly called the " Laws of the Unknowable ; " at all 
events, the ways of this logic are past finding out. 
Henceforth the unknowable serves as a kind of 
prison-house in which to lock up all troublesome 
questions and questioners, and the discussion pro- 
ceeds to the " Laws of the Knowable." 

This part comprises Mr. Spencer's attempt to get 
rid of the " carpenter theory," by showing that mat- 
ter and force are able to turn chaos into creation. 
He first provides himself with a homogeneous nebula, 
and then lets loose upon it the " Instability of the 
Homogeneous," the " Multiplication of Effects," and 
the " Integration of Correspondences." . N The argu- 
ment, which has been epitomized already, may be re- 
stated thus : The homogeneous must lapse into the 
heterogeneous, that is, into creation. Three such 
formidable principles as those just mentioned, must 
do something. The absurdity of the argument has 
been sufficiently pointed out already ; attention may 
be called, however, to the inner contradiction of these 
creative principles. 

This instability of the homogeneous depends en- 
tirely upon the fact that force is constantly at work 
producing change. But such force is as powerful 
against the heterogeneous as against the homogene- 
ous ; and there is really no more reason for erecting 
18 



274 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

the instability of the homogeneous into a principle 
than for erecting the instability of the heterogeneous 
into a principle. From the assumed working of 
force, instability in general must result ; and no gain 
or advance can be held. All things must flow, and 
nothing could stand, under a principle like this. 

Even granting, however, that the principle is a fact 
instead of a shapeless fancy, all organic stability at 
least, would be impossible under its operation. For 
even the heterogeneous, in Mr. Spencer's view, is but 
a collection of homogeneities ; the heterogeneous body 
is an aggregate of homogeneous bone, muscle, nerve, 
etc. ; and, since these single homogeneities are all 
subject to the law, they must all proceed to differen- 
tiate and fall into the heterogeneous, and destroy 
the organism. The " Integration of Correspond- 
ences" is a contradiction of the "Instability of the 
Homogeneous." The "Integration," etc., is trying 
to get like with like, that is, to produce the homo- 
geneous. But the " Instability," etc., resolutely sets 
its face against this procedure; and we must leave 
them to settle the matter between themselves. I 
will only point out that,, whichever wins, the other 
must perish ; and, if either perishes, the argument 
falls to the ground. But because this folly has been 
put into ten-syllabled words it has passed for wis- 
dom. Polysyllabic nonsense has usurped even the 
name of science. 

But, looking away from this inner contradiction, 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 275 

why are not all homogeneities unstable ? Take 
the light-bearing ether, or even our atmosphere ; 
and bow long would it take to develop them into 
any thing? They are homogeneous enough to be 
unstable, why don't they make something out of 
themselves ? Here is a capital chance for the great 
principles to work ; but the moment the sugges- 
tion is made, we see that the so-called principles 
are only powerless and baseless fancies. It might 
be claimed, however, that the reason for non-develop- 
ment in these cases is, that "correspondences" are 
pretty stoutly " integrated." In truth we are not 
dealing with science at all. Mr. Spencer has de- 
luded himself with a mass of vague and empty anal- 
ogies, and has actually persuaded himself that he has 
proved something. His cumbrous and inflated ter- 
minology has been taken for science, and under its 
cover the profoundest trash has passed for deepest 
wisdom. And this is the New Philosophy ! This is 
the new, the scientific book of Genesis ! This is the 
luminous reasoning by which the need of a guiding 
mind is dispensed with ! This is the firm scientific 
procedure which is so superior to the "carpenter 
theory" of the " Hebrew Myth." Still, until the new 
book is revised and corrected, I must think that it 
requires vastly more faith than the old one. 

This reasoning was supplemented by the powerful 
argument that mind could not control the universe, 
and we must therefore adopt the more rational view, 



276 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

that chance alone is competent to create and main- 
tain the order of creation. 

We next passed to the Principles of Psychology. 
Here we came upon the crowning absurdity, and 
the deepest contradictions, of the system. Before 
Mr. Spencer could claim to have entered the psycho- 
logical territory it was necessary to prove, first, that 
life and the physical forces correlate ; and, second, 
that mind and the physical forces correlate. Neither 
of these points was proved, or even made probable. 
To offer, as the explanation of a thought, a mechani- 
cal motion of brain-molecules, is no explanation what- 
ever. The question, How comes it that a vibrating 
nerve becomes or produces a perception, a thought ? 
was slurred over by calling it a mystery — a most 
convenient method of escaping difficulties. The in- 
genuity becomes all the more striking, when we 
remember that this question is one which this phi- 
losophy has no means of answering. Once over the 
gulf which separates life and mind from mechanically- 
acting matter, Mr. Spencer postulated and proved the 
following principles : 

A unit of feeling, and a unit of motion, have noth- 
ing whatever in common, and all attempt to assim- 
ilate them to each other, but renders the fact more 
apparent. 

Though they have nothing in common, yet are 
they opposite sides of the same thing. 

The distinction of subject and object is one which 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 277 

transcends consciousness by underlying it ; and can 
by no effort be thought away. 

For all that, the subject is only a modification of 
the organism ; that is, the subject disappears in the 
object. 

Mind is composed of units of feeling, and all its 
powers and activities are modifications of primitive 
sensations. To think is to feel. How we can ration- 
ally speak of feelings when there is no subject of the 
feelings, was not shown. 

Feelings cluster together and form new compounds 
— consciousness, thought, etc. Why feeling should do 
so, why a dozen, or a million feelings should take on 
any new character, was not made plain — the ques- 
tion, as being a disagreeable one, was not even men- 
tioned. To work out the system, we must assume 
that feelings can become conscious of themselves, 
and think about themselves, and compare themselves 
with one another ; and surely the needs of the sys- 
tem are reason enough for any one who has not " an 
overwhelming bias in favor of" — sound logic. 

There is a nerve-vesicle in the brain which repre- 
sents every past experience ; and all memory, etc., is 
but a re-excitation of those vesicles.. A perception 
of relation is due to the fact that the related ideas 
are connected by nerve-fibers. These statements 
can only be received by faith. This wisdom is only 
justified of its children. 

The association of ideas is the " Integration of Cor- 



278 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

respondences " — which relieves the question of all 
difficulty. 

The test of truth is thought-necessity. What we 
must think as real is real. 

Thought-necessity is only the result of habit ; 
hence, thought-necessity represents no objective fact, 
but only a subjective delusion produced by inveter- 
ate association. 

The test is applied in the following instructive 
fashion : 

We cannot help thinking that we are causes of 
our own actions, that we are capable of spontaneous 
activity. 

Though a thought-necessity compels us to think 
so, this thought-necessity deceives us. 

We are also forced to believe in the reality and 
identity of self; but this thought-necessity is a false 
witness. 

In short, all the thought-necessities are vile de- 
ceivers except the one which supports Mr. Spencer. 
The belief in an external world he graciously accepts, 
upon the warrant of a thought-necessity. All others 
are spurned from his presence with contempt and 
indignation. 

The ground for this distinction between the 
thought-necessities lies in the sore needs of Mr. 
Spencer's system. These serve as a supreme logical 
category, the genuine philosopher's stone for dis- 
tinguishing the false and the true. Its discovery 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 279 

certainly entitles Mr. Spencer to rank with the great 
creative logicians of the past. The invention of a new 
method in logic or philosophy is the highest, the 
supreme mark of genius. 

But inasmuch as thought-necessities express only 
the result of habit, their claim to represent reality is 
utterly without foundation. The logical laws them- 
selves become untrustworthy, the principle of causation 
has no assured validity ; and, as the necessary result, 
science and knowledge, the internal world and the 
external world, disappear into the void of a bottom- 
less and boundless nihilism. All this follows neces- 
sarily from the attempt to lead all our mental opera- 
tions back to experience. A closer examination, 
however, reveals the fact that experience itself is im- 
possible without the presence of the very powers 
which it is supposed to create. Out of sensation, as 
such, nothing can come. Unless there be a power 
which imposes law upon it, it must remain a mean- 
ingless chaos forever. The science of the doctrine 
is complete. If true, both knowledge and experience 
are impossible. 

Again, though the mind is the product of organ- 
ization, and has no existence apart from the organism, 
my system is not materialistic. It teaches " a grand 
progress which is bearing humanity onward to a 
higher intelligence and a nobler destiny." It in no- 
wise diminishes the beauty of this "grand progress" 
to know that it ends in annihilation. 



280 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

Finally, after having examined these astonishing 
acrobatic feats of logic, and having duly recorded our 
admiration of them, we saw that the very terms of 
the incantation were secret traitors. Upon a closer 
examination into scientific teaching we found that 
mechanical forces (if there be such) are utterly help- 
less without the postulate of an ever-ruling, ever- 
active, spiritual power. The atomic bottom fell out 
of the atheistic argument, and left science no alterna- 
tive except positivism or theism. The great medi- 
cine-man's charm, when brought into the daylight 
and examined, lost its magic power ; and when prop- 
erly disinfected proved entirely harmless. As long 
as it was shrouded in the mystery of the unknowable, 
the confused noises which saluted the ears of awe- 
struck listeners passed for the awful flapping of some 
dragon's dreadful wings ; but as soon as it was sum- 
moned to give an account of itself at the bar of logic, 
it folded its tents after the high and far-famed Arabian 
fashion, and failed to put in an appearance. 

There is no need to delay the verdict longer. I 
cannot agree with the popular estimate of Mr. Spencer. 
Though this system has been lauded to the skies as 
one cf the greatest products of philosophical thought, 
I must say, on the contrary, that its principles are a 
miracle of confusion and absurdity. Comprehensive 
as is Mr. Spencer's scientific knowledge, he seems 
utterly unable to take a comprehensive view of the 
logical relations of a system. The most palpable 



Review of Herbert Speneer. 281 

contradictions nestle side by side in the most friendly 
fashion, constituting a kind of logical " happy family." 
Yes and no lay aside their ancient enmity, contra- 
dictions swear eternal friendship, and the true logical 
millennium is ushered in. Mr. Spencer has picked 
up the loose and ill-defined notions of popular science 
and popular metaphysics, and without stopping to 
analyze their content, to say nothing of comparing 
them, he has proceeded to build, and the result is 
before us. A very little consideration would have suf- 
ficed to show that his psychology is fatal to rational 
science. A thoughtful criticism would have revealed 
the contradiction of his creative principles. One 
single, steady gaze into the fog of his argument 
would have shown the absence of every thing but im- 
agination. But the mania of system-building proves 
too strong for rational judgment, and the system bears 
abundant marks of having originated in a mania. 

If it were not that the history of philosophy 
abounds in similar absurdities, it would be impossible 
to believe that Mr. Spencer is serious. The grandeur 
which is claimed for his system is entirely due to 
the factors with which it deals. Any discussion of 
solar systems, of infinite space, time, and power, 
necessarily has an air of vastness about it which 
proves attractive. Mr. Spencer has painted a big 
picture with a big brush, and the popular imagina- 
tion, which finds it easier to wonder than to under- 
stand, will have it that he must be a great painter. 



282 Review of Herbert Spencer. 

Upon a sober survey it cannot be claimed that he 
has added much to our stock of knowledge. The ' 
associational doctrine has been expounded with far 
greater lucidity and far better logic. The same is 
true of cerebral psychology, while the gist of his ar- 
gument in general is identical with that of Lucretius. 
He has merely combined facts which we knew before 
into a huge, fantastic, contradictory system, which 
hides its nakedness and emptiness, partly under the 
vail of an imposing terminology, and partly in the 
primeval fog. The doctrine began in a fog, and 
never succeeded in getting out of it. An ambitious 
attempt, and a dismal failure, is our deliberate verdict 
upon the so-called New Philosophy. There are, to 
be sure, many ingenious and profound remarks scat- 
tered through Mr. Spencer's books. There are, too, 
faint glimpses of many of the deepest truths of psy- 
chology, but there is an utter failure to appreciate 
their meaning. Philosophy is not to be estimated 
by its epigrams and profound remarks, but by its 
underlying principles ; and applying this rule of criti- 
cism to this system, I reiterate my verdict. Apo- 
thegms and proverbs serve for quotation, but they 
are not philosophy. 

Science has fallen upon evil days. Every depart- 
ment is flooded with assertions which can never be 
put to a test, and upon the strength of propositions, 
which are amenable to neither proof nor intuition, 
the most extravagant theories are built up. In many 



Review of Herbert Spencer. 283 

quarters, especially in biology and physiology, science 
has degenerated altogether from that severe adher- 
ence to ascertained fact, which has won for it its pres- 
ent distinction. Contradiction and absurdity go for 
nothing so long as they fall in with prevailing tenden- 
cies. But that such a work as the one in hand, should 
pass, at once for the profoundest philosophy and the 
most assured science, is discouraging to the last de- 
gree. It is extremely fashionable— the false is apt to 
be fashionable — to decry metaphysics as a useless 
study ; but a small amount of logical culture and 
metaphysical knowledge would render such systems 
as this impossible, or at least harmless. I have not 
much expectation of a speedy revival of metaphysical 
study, still I do hope that intellectual buffoonery 
may not always pass for profound wisdom, even if it 
does call itself science. 



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